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THE BOAST 
OF THE SEMINOLE 


“INDIAN” STORIES 
WITH HISTORICAL BASES 

By D. LANGE 

12mo. Cloth Illustrated 

ON THE TRAIL OF THE SIOUX 

THE SILVER ISLAND OF THE 
CHIPPEWA 

LOST IN THE FUR COUNTRY 
IN THE GREAT WILD NORTH 
THE LURE OF THE BLACK HILLS 
THE LURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI 
THE SILVER CACHE OF THE PAWNEES 
THE SHAWNEE^S WARNING 
THE THREAT OF SITTING BULL 
THE RAID OF THE OTTAWA 
THE MOHAWK RANGER 
THE IROQUOIS SCOUT 
THE SIOUX RUNNER 
THE GOLD ROCK OF THE CHIPPEWA 
THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON 







f 









There lay the gold and silver coins stolen at Fort 

Brooke.— Page 256. 







THE BOAST 
OF THE SEMINOLE 


By 

D. LANGE 


ILLUSTRATED BY 
HAROLD CUE 




BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO, 











w. 


0 


Copyright, 1930 
By D. Lange 


The Boast of the Seminole 


APR 1 9 1930 ■ 


Printed in U. S. A. 


©C1^ 22215 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

There lay the gold and silver coins 
stolen at Fort Brooke (Page 
256) ..... Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

“ I could hear them talk ” . . . .12 

A warrior came slowly out of the woods . 150 

“ Drop that gun! ” . . . • . 258 


5 


r 



.4 ,, 




\ 


* 


I 





THE BOAST 
OF THE SEMINOLE 


CHAPTER I 

Hanowa^ the Seminole scout, jumped off 
his horse on the outskirts of Fort Brooke 
and entered the cabin of his friend, Sergeant 
David Munro, just as the eastern sky began 
to redden, while the sergeant and his son, 
Billy, were at breakfast. 

Alaka-ishayy I have come,” was his 
greeting, to which the white boy quickly 
replied, “Ho! Lagashay, yes, sit down;” 
for young Billy prided himself on his ability 
to speak the Seminole language and use the 
proper phrase in greeting a guest. Billy 
was indeed an apt pupil of his older Indian 
friend, who never tired of teaching the white 
boy new words and phrases spoken by his 
own people in the great swamps and forests 
and the wild Everglades of Florida. No 
matter how often the inquisitive boy asked: 
“ What is it? What do you call that? How 
do you say, ‘ He is a liar ’ ? or ‘ He is a good 

7 


8 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

man ’ ? Hanowa never tired and never lost 
patience. For an hour at a time Billy would 
send a fusillade of questions at Hanowa as 
the three friends sat at the red camp-fire in 
the pine woods, or in their log cabin at Fort 
Brooke, on Tampa Bay. Never once had 
the patient Seminole answered, Wykas- 
chay/^ be still, or, Ipuscha/^ go away. 

But on this occasion Billy was not given 
a chance to question Hanowa, for Sergeant 
Munro, whose enlistment had expired a 
month before, had too many questions, and 
his heart was too full of anxiety to turn the 
Seminole over to Billy. 

“ Ho! IjagashayT Munro repeated, aris¬ 
ing quickly and grasping the scout’s hand, 
“ I am glad you have come. You have been 
gone a long time, three weeks to-morrow, 
and I was much afraid that a white man had 
killed you or the soldiers had made you 
prisoner, for dark and evil days have fallen 
upon the land of your people. But my son 
has been a great comfort in these days. 

They will not see him. Father,’ he as¬ 
sured me, ‘ they can never catch Hanowa. 
He is a Seminole. He knows the swamps, 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 9 


the pine woods, and the hammocks/ But, 
now, sit down to eat. Bacon we have 
plenty, and beans and corn bread. Your 
horse looks as if you had traveled all night.” 

The sad and tired face of the Seminole 
brightened at the invitation of his friend. 
He took a chair and began to eat, while 
Munro sliced more bacon into the frying- 
pan and made a fresh pot of coffee. 

Elaha, my brother,” the Seminole 
boasted. “No white man can see a Seminole, 
if the Seminole does not wish to be seen. I 
have traveled a day and a night, through the 
shehoppa, the saw-palmetto; through the 
pine barrens, and along the edges of the 
swamps and the hammocks. I have not 
traveled on the trails. I knew there Was 
great trouble in the air, because from my 
hiding-places in the thickets of the ham¬ 
mocks I saw the warriors of my people go¬ 
ing north. I am hungry, for I have eaten 
nothing but the white hearts of tololocko, 
the cabbage-palm, and a little com meal I 
carried in my bag. I could not shoot game, 
for I wished that no Seminole warriors and 
no white man should see me, and I have 


10 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

slept only when my horse had to rest and 
feed.” 

And then Hanowa fell to eating in silence, 
as only a hungry Indian can eat, while 
Munro fried more bacon and set out more 
hot corn bread. 

When Hanowa had finished eating and 
had quenched his thirst with several cups of 
black coffee, Munro could not restrain him¬ 
self any longer. 

“ What have the eyes and ears of my 
brother learned, while he was away scout¬ 
ing to the south? Has he seen Dan Holtess 
with the crooked heart, and Sokala who 
shows him to walk in the crooked path? ” 
Elaka, I have tracked Holtess, and I 
have tracked Sokala. To the river Mayakka 
I have tracked them, which flows into the 
western sea fifty miles south of the bay 
called Tampa. On the Mayakka I found 
them. They were making a big noise with 
talk and with their axes. It was dark. 
Then I heard a big tree fall, and I heard 
the white man howl and shout many words. 
And then I knew they had cut a tree which 
fo-a, the bee people, had filled with honey. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 11 

I knew that the bee people had drawn their 
daggers that glisten with little drops of 
poison. I knew that they had stabbed the 
white man many times, and I knew why he 
howled and swore many bad words. And 
then I forgot that I was a scout, and I 
laughed aloud and cut my face on the saw- 
palmetto.” 

“ Didn’t the Indian howl and swear? ” 
asked Billy, when Hanowa had quit laugh¬ 
ing. 

‘‘ No,” replied the scout, “ the Seminoles 
never make bad talk to fo-a; it would bring 
bad luck. Sokala had built a little fire near 
the bees, and he cut with his ax, and took 
the white combs from fo-a. But Holtess 
howled more and called out that he would go 
and get a kettle and boil out some wax to 
stop the chink, chink, in the pack.” 

“And what did he do then? ” asked Billy, 
when Hanowa was silent. 

“ Then he came straight at my hiding- 
place, swearing all the time at the bees and 
at the sharp teeth of the shehoppa. I lay 
very still. He came nearer; it was very 
dark. Pretty soon I knew he would fall 


12 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


over me. I sprang up like lokosee, the bear. 
‘ Whoof, whoof! ’ I made like a bear, and 
rushed into the scrub on four feet. He let 
go a big yell and fell down in the saw-scrub. 
He swore at the bear and fired his pistol 
after me,—two, three times. I heard the 
bullets sing, but I was lying flat on the 
ground and quickly crawled away like a 
snake. 

“ I lay very still, until the two men had 
built a fire. Then I crawled slowly, very 
slowly to the edge of the tall scrub so I could 
hear them talk.” 

“ What did you hear? ” asked Billy. 

“ Let our friend have a little rest,” ad¬ 
monished Billy’s father. “ Give him a 
chance to catch his breath.” 

The Seminole smiled. “ Billy wants to 
know. He will be a good scout. The white 
man was still mad. He could not sit still. 
He rubbed himself in many places. Then 
he swore again at the bees and at the bear, 
and he swore at Sokala for not letting him 
take a hound along; for with a hound they 
could have killed the bear. Then I heard 
Sokala talk. 



“I COULD HEAR THEM TALK. ” — 12 , 






THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 13 

White man,’ he said, ‘ you have made 
much bad talk. You have made enough bad 
talk. Now you stop. Tell me, white man, 
why did you laugh when you swore at the 
bees? ’ 

“ The white man said he had not laughed; 
he had not felt like laughing. 

‘‘ ‘ I heard somebody laugh,’ said Sokala. 
‘ Who was it, if you did not laugh? Did you 
see the bear? ’ 

“ Then the white man grew mad again 
and said he knew bears. He had killed a 
hundred of them, and no fool Indian need 
teach him about bears. 

‘ Now you stop,’ spoke up Sokala, and 
arose from his log. ‘ You talk more swear 
at me and I leave you. I leave you to¬ 
night.’ 

‘‘ Then the white man rubbed himself 
again, and sat down on his other leg and 
promised to make no more swear talk at 
Sokala, but he did make some more at the 
bees. 

‘‘ I knew now,” continued Hanowa after 
a short pause, “ that I must not crawl up to 
their camp-fire to find out what was in their 


14 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


pack. For I knew that Sokala would sleep 
with one eye open, and he might shoot me 
and I could never come to tell you where I 
had been; for I knew that Sokala did not 
believe that the white man had seen a bear.” 

When Hanowa had taken another cup of 
coffee, sweetened with brown sugar, Billy 
could not resist asking another question: 

“ What would you have done, Hanowa, if 
they had sent a hound after you? ” 

Shot him dead with my pistol, and do it 
quick.” 

‘‘ But then the men would have come after 
you.” 

“No, they would not. No Seminole goes 
near a man who is hiding in the scrub with 
a pistol.” 

“ Now, Billy, no more questions,” Munro 
broke in. “ Hanowa must lie down for a 
long sleep. When he has slept enough we 
shall talk more and make our plans. Hol- 
tess and Sokala are the men w6 should go 
after. I believe Holtess is the man who 
planned the dirty deed and carried it out, 
and I remember now many little things no¬ 
body could explain when they happened.” 


CHAPTER II 


It was not long before the deep breath¬ 
ing of Hanowa in the loft of the cabin told 
that the young Seminole was making up lost 
sleep. The loft, with a screened window at 
each end, was Hanowa’s favorite sleeping- 
place on cool days, and this was going to be 
a good day for sleeping. The wind blew 
from the northwest, and the air had a pleas¬ 
ant tang as on a fine October day in the 
North. His head resting on a small pillow 
filled with Spanish moss, his lithe, supple 
form wrapped up in an army blanket and 
stretched out on a mattress also filled with 
Spanish moss, that was the way Hanowa 
liked to sleep. Long and soundly he slept, 
as only a tired boy, a scout, and a soldier can 
sleep. 

Billy of his own accord took care of 
Hanowa’s horse. First he took him to water 
and then he tied him in the shed. The fine 
black animal whinnied as Billy left him. 

“ Don’t worry, Sopa,” said Billy, turning 
around. “ I’ll be back.” Very soon he 

15 


16 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

returned with a big armful of hay and a 
bag of oats, which he had begged of the 
hostler in the mule barn at Fort Brooke. 

“ Now, Sopa, you are going to have a 
feast of real hay and oats. This is the first 
of December, and the wild grass is all hard 
and dead and no good, but here is some real 
feed for a horse.” 

And Sopa did have a feast, and when he 
had finished, he grunted and lay down, and 
like his master fell asleep, but a horse never 
sleeps as soundly as a man. 

It was Billy who had named the horse, 
Sopa, which is the Seminole word for blue. 
Billy did not like the Seminole word for 
black, and he claimed that he could see a 
bluish sheen reflected from Sopa’s glossy, 
coat when the sun was shining on him. 
Billy had long coveted this horse for his own 
and had often tried to buy him, and once he 
had offered to trade his own horse and a cow 
for him, but Hanowa had smiled at the offer, 
saying: Wauca, no good. I can catch 

waucas in the woods; plenty of them wild. 

“No, Tewahnee, my boy,” he had ex¬ 
plained, “ I raised Sopa, when I lived at the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 17 

big sugar mill south of St. Augustine. I 
cannot sell him or trade him. He is the best 
horse in Florida. He can travel fast and 
long without food and rest. He never runs 
away when I sleep, he knows where I want 
to go, and he does not talk to horses going 
by, when I am hiding in the scrub. His an¬ 
cestors came to our country a long time ago 
with De Soto, a great chief of the Spanal- 
kays. That is what the big white master, 
Bulow, of the sugar mill told me. I do not 
know if it is true.’’ 

While Billy was tending Sopa and plan¬ 
ning how, some day, he would offer Hanowa 
a shining new gun for the horse, Billy’s 
father sat in the cabin by himself and let 
his mind run over the events of the last 
month. For fifteen years he had faithfully 
served his country, at first as a private, and 
for the last five years as a sergeant, loved by 
his men and trusted and honored by every 
officer under whom he had served. 

But now a terrible thing had happened. 
His good name had been blackened and dis¬ 
honored. He had been relieved from ordi¬ 
nary military duties and had served as 


18 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

orderly and trusted man at headquarters, 
and at the quartermaster’s office. He had 
been given a key to the building and was a 
trusted bookkeeper and treasurer. On a 
dark, windy night, about six weeks before, 
he had gone to the office about nine o’clock 
to get some papers on which he wanted to 
work at his quarters. He had talked to the 
sentry as he entered, but when he left the 
building the sentry was at the farther end 
of his beat, about three hundred paces away. 

That same night the building had been 
entered by somebody who must have had a 
key. The hinges and padlock of the strong 
box had been forced, and a tin box contain¬ 
ing $1021 in gold and silver coins had been 
stolen. One gold piece and a Mexican sil¬ 
ver dollar were found next day in a closet 
where Munro used to hang his overcoat and 
cap. A few days later the empty tin box 
was found buried on the edge of Munro’s 
sweet-potato patch. Close by in the scrub 
palmetto was found a freshly dug hole care¬ 
fully filled up, but containing no money. 
Neither of the two sentries on duty during 
the night of the theft had heard any noise or 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 19 


seen anybody enter or leave the building, 
except as already told. 

In view of the excellent record of Munro, 
no formal charges had been preferred 
against him. He had voluntarily appeared 
before a Military Court of Inquiry and had 
frankly answered all questions. The pro¬ 
ceedings of the court being entirely friendly 
and informal, Munro had asked these ques¬ 
tions : 

“ Do you think, gentlemen, that I would 
have let the sentry see me enter the building, 
if I had intended to steal the money? 

‘‘ Do you think I would have lost two 
coins in my closet? 

“ Would I have buried the tin box in my 
potato patch and dug a blind hole close by? ” 

The members of the court laughed and 
said they did not believe Sergeant Munro 
capable of such a bungling job; and they 
rendered a unanimous verdict that the money 
had been stolen by a person or by persons 
unknown. A week later Sergeant Munro 
was given an honorable discharge, for which 
he had made a formal application some time 
previously. 


20 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


Until he had received his honorable dis¬ 
charge, Munro had not felt at all sure that 
he would not have to face a regular court 
martial on the charge of having stolen Gov¬ 
ernment money. That easy, informal 
friendliness of the board of inquiry might 
have been a ruse. The case had never been 
a laughing matter to him. If a new com¬ 
mandant were sent to Fort Brooke he might 
now have him tried before a civil court. 

“ I wish they had tried me in court mar¬ 
tial,” he said to himself. “ The military 
courts get through with a case and seldom 
make a mistake, and everybody in court 
would have been my friend. In a civil court 
of the Territory of Florida I might be under 
bond or in jail for months awaiting trial. I 
should have to hire a lawyer, and who can 
tell how my case would look to the jury? I 
wish I had asked for a formal trial by court 
martial. The court would have had to find 
me innocent. Then I would be through with 
the case and could have followed my wife 
and the children to New York State, as 
Billy and I had planned, and lived happily 
on our little farm. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 21 

For years, Martha and I had planned 
that on Christmas Eve, 1836, we would meet 
all our school-day friends on the old family 
homestead near Newburgh on the Hudson. 

“ And where and what am I now? I am a 
man living under a cloud. Never shall I 
forget the year and the Christmas of 1836. 
Billy will not feel like singing ‘ Holy 
Night ’ on Christmas Eve as he did last 
year,—^his mother and the two little brothers 
a thousand miles away, and his father ac¬ 
cused of being a thief! Under a cloud, I 
am living in bleeding Florida, which man’s 
folly, mostly white man’s greed and folly, 
has changed from a natural Paradise to a 
realm of the Prince of Evil. No angel will 
bring a message of peace this Christmas Eve 
to either white man, black man, or red man. 
That terrible Seminole war has been raging 
a year and is getting worse every month. I 
did not tell Hanowa what happened on the 
Withlacoochee about two weeks ago. He 
would not be sleeping now if I had told 
him.” 


CHAPTER III 


It was late in the afternoon when Han- 
owa woke up and dropped down from the 
loft. 

Elaha/' he asked, “ shall we talk? ” 

“Let us talk,” replied Munro. “ I have 
much to tell you, but you should talk first, 
because you have been on a long journey.” 

“ It has been a long journey,” Hanowa 
began. “ I traveled north, and I traveled 
south, and then I rode north again. After 
the white captains had said that my brother 
had not taken the yellow money, you told me 
to find the man who had taken it. I went 
and sat down under a tree near the bay and 
I saw a white man and a Seminole trying 
to buy a sailboat from the captain of all the 
ships in the bay; but the captain would not 
sell them a boat. I lay down as if I were 
going to sleep. 

“ ‘ Who is that Indian? ’ asked the cap¬ 
tain. 

He is my man,’ replied the white man. 

22 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 23 


‘ I have bought him/ And he showed the 
captain a paper, but I think the paper was 
a lie. 

“ The captain looked at the paper and 
said, ‘ All right! But you clear out of here. 
I have no boat to sell. They all belong to 
the Government.’ 

‘‘ The white man wore a beard and looked 
like a man whom the soldiers call Cracker. 
When he started to walk away, I remem¬ 
bered that I had seen him before, because 
he walks like an Indian with his toes point¬ 
ing in. Three years ago he worked for the 
general at Fort Brooke. The general had 
him show the soldiers how to build houses, 
where to make their gardens, and the gen¬ 
eral gave him a tube that stood on three legs. 
He also gave him a long chain and a pole 
painted white and red, and he had him show 
the soldiers where to cut trees and build 
bridges on the road that leads north to the 
ford of the river, Withlacoochee, on the 
road to St. Augustine. The general also 
had him make shoes for the mules and 
horses, and fix the iron hoops on the wheels 
of the big wagons.” 


24 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“ It is Holtess/' Munro broke in, ‘‘ Dan 
Holtess. The general sent him away be¬ 
cause he had a bad influence on the soldiers. 
He played cards with them for money and 
had them all broke. The men claimed that 
he cheated them by playing with marked 
cards, but they could never prove anything 
on him. All the officers, except Captain 
Hanisch, were glad to see Holtess go. Holt¬ 
ess had done some repair work in the quar¬ 
ters of Captain Hanisch, and a week later 
the captain’s wife discovered that her wed¬ 
ding ring was gone. Thus far no evidence 
had been discovered as to the whereabouts 
of the ring. When Holtess was sent from 
the post, the captain concluded that his wife 
would never see her ring again, and she 
didn’t. The captain had to order a dupli¬ 
cate from New York.” 

At this point Billy appeared. He was as 
hungry as an Indian, he said, for he had 
cleaned with a currycomb and brush all 
three horses, Sopa, and his own, and his 
father’s. He had bought—^he did not say 
where—a bushel of oats and a lot of real 
hay. He had also caught a mess of fish in 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 25 


the Hillsboro River, and he made ready to 
cook them for supper. 

“Look, Father,” he remarked. “Three 
fine trout, one for each of us.” 

“ Your trout are bass, my son,” observed 
Munro, “ but everybody in Florida and 
Georgia calls them trout. You may get sup¬ 
per, Billy, while Hanowa and I take a short 
walk.” 

“ Don’t be late,” said Billy. “ In half an 
hour the grub will be on the table. I can 
eat two fish, if you aren’t here.” 

After supper the Seminole continued his 
story. Holtess and his companion, whom he 
had soon recognized as Sokala, the son of a 
Seminole and a black woman, failing to ob¬ 
tain a boat had started north on horseback 
toward the Withlacoochee. Hanowa had 
followed them, intending to watch for a 
chance to find out what their packs con¬ 
tained, On the third day out he had learned 
from some Seminole women that, on the day 
before, the two men had made a swing 
around through the pine woods and that 
they were again going south toward Fort 
Brooke and Tampa Bay. 


26 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

‘‘ The white man is trying to leave Flor¬ 
ida,” Hanowa reasoned, “ and he is afraid 
of the white soldiers who are holding the 
country east of the Withlacoochee along the 
road to St. Augustine.” 

“ Why don’t the Indians kill the white 
man? ” Hanowa asked of a Seminole woman. 
“ The Seminoles are at war with the white 
men.” 

“ The bearded white man has a paper with 
the marks of the chiefs Osceola and Micken- 
opah, saying that he is a friend of the Semi¬ 
noles,” the woman told him, “ and he gives 
sugar to the children and strips of red cloth 
to the women.” 

‘‘ How did you find them again? ” asked 
Billy. 

“ It took me a long time, ten days or more; 
but it is too long a story,” Hanowa replied. 

And then he related that, at the bee camp, 
he had heard the two men talk of getting a 
big Indian canoe made of a large cedar log, 
on which they would travel down the west 
coast to Key West and find a ship. 

“ And now I have only one more thing to 
tell to my friends,” continued Hanowa. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 27 

‘‘ Please tell it/’ Bill snapped in. 

‘‘ Keep still, Billy,” Munro reprimanded 
the impulsive boy. “ And you might as well 
close your mouth, Billy. You don’t hear 
any more with your mouth open.” 

“ I forgot myself,” Billy replied laughing. 
“ Please go on, Hanowa. What is it you 
have not told us? ” 

‘‘ Before I left the Mayakka I rode to a 
camp of my friends. I found only old men, 
women, and children; the warriors had all 
gone north to the Withlacoochee. I told 
them of the white man that swore at the bees. 
I told them that a boat with soldiers would 
come down from Fort Brooke to catch So- 
kala and the white man, when they are pad¬ 
dling their canoe to Key West. The chief 
of the soldiers at Fort Brooke wants the 
white man and he has told the soldiers to 
bring him in dead, if they cannot catch him 
alive. Dan Holtess and Sokala know that 
the soldiers will do what their chief tells 
them to do. 

“ When I left the camp, my uncle, Tal¬ 
lahassee, with some boys started to visit the 
white man’s camp to tell him of the soldiers 


28 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

that will be looking for him where the May- 
akka flows into the sea. But my uncle will 
not tell him how he learned that a boat with 
soldiers is coming to the mouth of the May- 
akka. I am done.” 

Iste lockse, Hanowa,” Billy exclaimed. 
‘‘ That’s a lie; it isn’t true! ” 

ElaJiaj you must make it true,” Han- 
owa replied with a perfectly grave face. 
“ To-morrow you must go and ask the white 
chief to send the soldiers in a boat to the 
mouth of the Mayakka.” 

When in the morning Munro made this 
request. Major Belton, the commandant, 
looked at him with unconcealed surprise. 

“ What in thunder do you expect of me. 
Sergeant? ” he exploded. “ You know, that 
at this time, I cannot spare a boat-load of 
soldiers to chase one lone scoundrel over the 
Gulf of Mexico. Just give him rope, and he 
will hang himself some day.” 

When Hanowa heard the results of the 
interview with the commandant there was a 
smile on his serious face and a strange light 
in his dark eyes. 

The white chief,” he spoke gravely, “ is 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 29 


a great man, and we cannot make him send 
the soldiers. By this time Tallahassee has 
told the white man at the bee camp that the 
soldiers are coming after him, and he will 
keep off the big salt water. You see, JElaha, 
if Holtess and Sokala had started for Cuba, 
we should never catch them. So I had to 
tell Tallahassee that the soldiers were com¬ 
ing in a boat to the Mayakka.’’ 


CHAPTER IV 


Since the outbreak of the Seminole war 
a year before, in 1835, Billy had strict orders 
not to go more than a mile from the fort. 
He had to tell his father where he was going, 
and a time was set when he had to be back. 

“I feel sure none of my many Seminole 
friends would harm you,” Munro had told 
the lad, “ and I know that Osceola has com¬ 
manded his warriors not to harm women and 
children, but I also know, only too well, that 
no Indian chief exercises any real control 
over his warriors. When they are out of his 
sight, they do pretty much as they please, 
and the temptation to take a scalp without 
much danger to themselves is often irresist¬ 
ible, especially to the young bucks.” 

When nearly a year before, the day of 
Christmas Eve, Major Dade’s command 
consisting of eight officers and about a hun¬ 
dred men started on their fateful march from 
Fort Brooke to Fort King, a distance of one 

30 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 31 

hundred and thirty miles northeast, Billy 
was wild to join the command as a drummer 
boy. 

“ I can play the drum, Father,” he ar¬ 
gued. “ Major Dade said only yesterday I 
could play it as well as the regular drummer. 
Please, Father, go and ask him to let me 
go with the soldiers to Fort King. 

“ Private Andrews says he will look after 
me. You said yourself last week that you 
were not afraid if I was out fishing with 
him. You know he would bring me back 
safe. Please, Father, do let me go.” 

“ Billy, the soldiers are not going on a 
fishing trip,” Munro tried to impress the lad. 
“ They are marching on a campaign against 
the Seminoles, and Private! Andrews will 
have all he can do to take care of himself. 
It is a most unrighteous war, but it is the 
duty of the soldiers to go and do their best. 

“ Most of Florida is still a wild country. 
Why should the Indians be compelled to 
settle west of the Mississippi, where they do 
not want to go? What could I tell your 
mother if I found you dead and scalped? ” 

“ The soldiers are not going to fight,” ar- 


32 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

gued Bill, “ they are just going to march 
to Fort King.” 

‘‘ Soldiers have no choice about the time 
and place of a battle. When they are at¬ 
tacked, they have to defend themselves. No, 
Billy, I could not let you go, even if I 
joined the troops myself.” 

“ Would you go, if Major Dade requested 
you? ” asked Bill. 

“ I certainly would. But even then you 
would have to stay at Fort Brooke.” 

It was a hard decision for Bill. He and 
Private Andrews had it all planned. The 
men did not expect any fighting, because 
they believed that the Indians did not even 
know that the troops were going to move. 
The command would undoubtedly camp a 
night at the ford of the Withlacoochee, and 
that river was just full of fish. Ever since 
Bill had crossed the river on his trip to St. 
Augustine, he had wanted to put in a day 
fishing on this beautiful stream. 

Bill was in a bad mood when he saw the 
soldiers and his friend Andrews march out 
of the fort the day before Christmas, and the 
soldiers who had to remain behind under Ma- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 88 

jor Belton were not any happier than BUI. 
The fort seemed deserted now, for only 
enough men were left to guard the place 
against an attack and protect the stores and 
other Government property. 

Bill cut a few sprays of holly for Christ¬ 
mas decorations. In the evening he opened 
a Christmas parcel his mother had managed 
to get to Fort Brooke a week ahead of time. 
He and his father had a fine wild turkey 
roasted for their Christmas dinner, stuffed 
with dried apples and raisins, as Bill liked 
it. And the boy did full justice to the bird, 
and his spirits revived a little when, in the 
evening, he and his father sat in front of a 
ruddy pine log fire, while Munro told of his 
own boyhood spent in New York State, 
where the winter weather, the ice, and the 
snow, were always just right at Christmas 
time, and Bill almost wished that he had 
gone with his mother to New York. When 
Munro began to praise the southern winter 
climate, where you can hunt turkeys and 
quails and alligators and go fishing without 
first cutting holes in the ice, Billy looked 
glum and gave a half-growling answer. 


34 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“ Yes/’ he mumbled, “ if I were not shut 
up at this lonely old fort! If I could go with 
Andrews to the Withlacoochee, or you and 
I and Hanowa could go and camp on the 
Mayakka! Oh, yes, then I wouldn’t care 
if I never saw any ice and snow all my life.” 

On the days after Christmas the lad fell 
again into a gloomy mood; he was lonesome, 
and the days just dragged. He fished a 
little in the bay; he and his father did a little 
target shooting. However, for this sport 
there was very little ammunition; nor was 
the lad’s heart in anything he did. His heart 
was with Private Andrews and the other 
soldiers. He figured out where they would 
be each evening, and he seriously thought of 
running away and following them. 

As he lay in bed one evening, he went all 
over the plan again and again. The troops 
could not march more than twelve miles a 
day, or fifteen at the most, because they had 
taken along an ox team drawing one of the 
six-pounders of the fort, and Bill knew that 
oxen will not travel more than twelve or fif¬ 
teen miles a day. 

He felt sure that he could march thirty 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 35 


miles a day, although he had never done it; 
twenty miles was the most he had ever made 
in one day. He felt sure that he could find 
the command; because an ox team, several 
horses, and a hundred men leave a trail, 
which a blind man could follow. For food, 
he would carry a small bag of corn meal and 
some cold turkey meat. Water can be found 
anywhere in Florida, winter and summer. 
He would go light, carry no firearms. Well, 
he might carry his pistol; he would feel a 
little safer, alone in the woods at night if he 
had a pistol. In the daytime, if he met any 
Indians, he would talk Seminole to them. 
They surely wouldn’t scalp a lone fellow 
without giving him a chance to say a few 
words. Of course, he would build no fire at 
night. Even the winter nights in Florida 
are warm enough for a man to sleep wrapped 
up in his blanket without a camp-fire. 

“ Yes, sir,” Bill whispered to himself, “ I 
could do it. I would just about catch up 
with them on the Withlacoochee.” 

And then Bill fell asleep, but he did not 
enjoy his usual sound sleep. He dreamed 
and tossed about, and talked in his sleep. 


36 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

He and Andrews had a line out in the river. 
They had hooked a big one and were pulling 
hini in. Suddenly the goggle eyes and the 
ugly snout of an alligator showed above the 
water. 

“ Pull hardl ” shouted Andrews, and Bill 
pulled so hard that he tumbled over back¬ 
wards out of his bunk. 

“ Billy, what are you doing? ” his father 
called. 

“ ‘ Doing ’? ” Bill answered, rubbing his 
head. “ I dreamed that Andrews and I had 
caught an alligator and the ugly beast 
snapped his big jaws at me.” 

In the morning Bill felt a sore lump on 
the back of his head. He thought some more 
about running away, but decided that it 
would be a foolish, hare-brained thing to do. 
‘‘ It would worry Father half to death,” he 
concluded. ‘‘ He would not know what had 
become of me, and if I left a note telling him 
what I had done, he would follow me, and 
then,—^well, then, we might both get killed 
and Mother would be left all alone with Jack 
and Dave.” 

The next few days Bill spent with the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 37 

soldiers in the fort, much of it with his friend 
the hostler. Everybody was anxious for 
news, but the hostler said there could not be 
any news, imtil the commandant at Fort 
King sent a dispatch-rider. 

However, on the afternoon of New Year’s 
eve, just a week after the troops had 
marched, news did come to Fort Brooke, but 
it was tragically different from the news ex- » 
pected, and it was not brought by a dashing 
horseman. A wounded soldier, just able to 
drag himself along, arrived at the fort late 
in the afternoon, and his news was of the 
kind brought by the messengers of Job. All 
preparations for a celebration of New Year’s 
eve were dropped at once, and word was sent 
to the few whites who lived outside of the 
stockade to come within the fort that even¬ 
ing. Bill listened to the story of the man 
with staring eyes. It was Private Ransom 
Clarke. Then he ran home to tell his father, 
who was just lighting the candles and setting 
the supper on the table. 

“ Father, Private Clarke has come back. 
He—he—he is wounded,” Bill told, all out 
of breath. “ Major Dade and all the men 




38 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

and officers are dead. The Seminoles am¬ 
bushed them, just as the Indians did with 
Braddock a long time ago. They fought 
nearly all day. When Clarke was badly 
wounded he crawled away and lay in the 
brush until dark. The Indians did not find 
him. He says he is the only man that got 
away. The oxen and the horses are all dead, 
too. Clarke bandaged his wounds as well as 
he could. He walked at night and hid in 
the daytime. Only to-day he traveled in 
daytime. He was afraid he would die if he 
waited till dark. It is on the other side of 
the Withlacoochee, seven miles from the 
river, where all the men are lying dead. 

“ Major Belton says we should come into 
the fort right away. He expects the Indians 
to be here at any time. I am going to help 
fight, if they attack the fort.” 

Sergeant Munro placed the supper in a 
dishpan. Bill led the two horses out of the 
shed; Munro blew out the candles, poured 
a pail of water on the fireplace, hastily gath¬ 
ered up the guns in the cabin; and father 
and son hurried into the fort. That was 
New Year’s eve at Fort Brooke in 1835. 


CHAPTER V 


For a week Sergeant Munro and his son 
lived inside the fort. A few soldiers, riding 
two and two, scouted the neighborhood and 
a strict watch was kept up at the fort day 
and night, but Major Belton was less afraid 
of an attack than he was of the wooden build¬ 
ings being set on fire. 

In our many Indian wars the red warriors 
have seldom seriously attacked any of the 
so-called forts, because they never possessed 
any artillery. The siege of Detroit under 
Pontiac, the attack on Bryan’s Station in 
Kentucky, and the attack on Fort Ridgely 
in Minnesota in 1862, are a few of the ex¬ 
ceptions, but in no case did the Indians ever 
capture a fort, either by assault or siege. 
And, fortunately for the whites, they never 
attacked at night; their favorite time for a 
surprise attack was at dawn of day. It is 
said that they held the belief that a warrior 
killed at night would have to live in perpet¬ 
ual darkness in the next world. 

39 


40 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


When no Indians were discovered near 
Fort Brooke, Bill and his father moved back 
into their own cabin, but Munro nailed a few 
hoards over the windows and always bolted 
the door at night; and when the candles were 
lit in the evening, Bill of his own accord, 
hung a blanket over the windows. He also 
took the horses to the stable in the fort every 
evening. 

“No sneaking Seminole is going to steal 
our horses,” declared Bill. “ I know an In¬ 
dian thinks that stealing a horse is the next 
bravest deed to taking a scalp.” 

Nor did Munro have to warn Bill not to 
stray any distance from the fort. The lad 
did most of his fishing in the bay right at the 
fort, and when he fished from a boat, he was 
careful not to expose himself to a shot from 
a thicket on shore. In fact, Bill was the 
most persistent scout for Indians in the 
whole fort. When he worked in the garden, 
he kept one eye on the near pine woods, and 
his loaded gun was always leaning against 
a post close by. 

When some of the soldiers gibed at Bill’s 
extreme caution. Bill laughed at them and 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 41 


replied, “ Maybe if Major Dade and his 
men had been better scouts they would not 
all be dead now.” 

In this statement Bill was probably right. 
All the outstanding disasters in our Indian 
wars, where the facts have become known, 
have been the result of a lack of proper cau¬ 
tion, or of recklessness on the part of the 
commander. 

But to return to our story. On the day 
after Hanowa had returned from his long 
scouting trip. Bill did not go fishing, nor did 
he work in the garden. His father and the 
Seminole were holding a council of war, and 
Billy was too much interested to miss any¬ 
thing. If his father and Hanowa were go¬ 
ing on any kind of a long trip. Bill felt 
reasonably certain that he would stand a 
good chance of going along. He had 
always wanted to go on a long trip to the 
really wild parts of the country. He had 
been to Fort King, near the present town 
of Ocala in Marion County, and he had once 
spent a week at St. Augustine, with his 
mother. He had been on many short hunt¬ 
ing and fishing trips with his friend An- 


42 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


drews and other soldiers, and with his father 
near Fort Brooke. 

Bill had made up his mind that if his 
father and Hanowa were now going on any 
trip, he was not going to stay behind at Fort 
Brooke. He had his arguments all ready. 
He was a year older now than he was at the 
time when Major Dade’s men left the fort. 
He had become a good shot, both with a 
rifle and a pistol; more than once he had 
beaten his father shooting at a mark. His 
father had acknowledged that Bill was a 
cautious scout, and that he could spy a wild 
turkey or deer as far off as any hunter. 

“ Is Elaha going to catch the white bee 
man and Sokala? ” asked Hanowa, after he 
and Munro had again talked over the result 
of the Seminole’s long scouting trip. 

“ God only knows where they are now,” 
Munro answered in despair. “ We shall no 
longer And them on the Mayakka. To fol¬ 
low them would be like going on a wild- 
goose chase. How can we ever hope to find 
two men in all the great wild country of 
Florida? Remember, Hanowa, these two 
men do not wish to be found.” 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 43 

Hanowa smiled. “ The Seminoles often 
catch wild geese/’ he replied. “ Maybe we 
find the bee man’s trail, or my friends tell 
me where he went.” 

“ Perhaps Holtess does not have the 
stolen money, or he has buried it somewhere 
or sunk it in the Everglades. In that case 
we could not find it in a thousand years,” 
suggested Munro. “ It would be worse than 
hunting for a needle.” 

“ He has it,” asserted Hanowa. “ Did I 
not hear him say he had that in his pack 
which makes ‘ chink, chinli ’ ? He will not 
bury it and go away, because he will be 
afraid that Sokala will go back and dig it 
up, and then he will never see Sokala again 
and he will never find the white and yellow 
money.” 

“ But there are other difficulties we must 
meet,” Munro reminded his friend. “ The 
war has grown bad again. While you were 
away in the month of November, in the 
Fourth Moon, as your people call it, the 
Seminoles and the soldiers fought over three 
days near the Big Wahoo Swamp. Many 
soldiers and many Seminoles were killed. 


U THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


The Seminoles are angry, and they will make 
you go and fight the white soldiers/’ 

For a short time Hanowa sat looking in 
silence at the red and smoky flames of the 
pine logs in the fireplace. 

“ Om' big chiefs,” he broke the silence, 
“ know Hanowa. Osceola, Mickenopah, 
and Alligator know me. Many warriors 
know me. They know that my parents died 
of the smallpox. They know that the white 
lady of the big sugar fields near St. Augus¬ 
tine fed me and gave me blankets until I 
was big enough to hunt and live with my 
own people. They will not ask me to fight 
the white people, and they know that I will 
not scout for the soldiers. Elaha, I am 
done.” 

“ That was good talk, Hanowa,” Munro 
replied. “ But my worst fear I have not yet 
told you. The Seminoles will surely wish to 
kill me and Bill. Remember they are at 
war against the whites. Many of them will 
think I am still a soldier and have come into 
their country as a spy, and I cannot go and 
say to my wife, ‘ Martha, the Seminoles 
have killed our boy.’ ” 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 45 

‘‘ I’ll look out for myself, Father,” Bill 
broke in. “I am not going to stay at Fort 
Brooke.” 

“ Keep still, Billy,” the sergeant ordered. 
‘‘ Who says you are going to stay at Fort 
Brooke? Let us hear what Hanowa has to 
say.” 

For a long time the young Seminole gazed 
in silence at the red coals in the fireplace, 
and Bill saw his brow wrinkled as in deep 
thought. 

Elaha, you should go to the white cap¬ 
tain of the soldiers,” he at last spoke slowly. 
‘‘ He should give you a paper which says 
that you are a good white man and a friend 
of the Seminoles and a friend of the Great 
White Father; and he should put a big red 
seal on the paper. 

“ If we meet any angry warriors, we show 
them the paper with the big red seal. I tell 
them what it says, and maybe I tell them 
more. I think they will be afraid to hurt 
you. I say: ‘This is Elaha, my older 
brother, and this is Echosee, my younger 
brother. They are friends. They wish to 
find a white man who has a box that belongs 


46 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

to Elaha/ Maybe I tell them less; maybe 
I tell them more. Maybe we see them and 
they do not see us. 

“ If Elaha and Echosee are afraid to go 
with me, I shall go alone, if my brother 
desires me to go. I am done.” 

That last sentence touched Bill in a tender 
spot. “ Father never was afraid of any 
white man nor of any-” 

“ Wait a bit, Billy,” Munro interrupted 
the lad. “ Wait a bit! We have been talk¬ 
ing of a very dangerous trip. Brave men 
and good soldiers must often face dangers, 
but they first calculate the chances and 
gauge the danger. They do not rush in like 
fools. 

“We have weighed two of the dangers, 
but there is a third, which we have not even 
mentioned. Holt ess and Sokala are dan¬ 
gerous men to trail, and there is now no law 
in Florida south of Fort King and St. 
Augustine. Do you know what that means, 
Billy? ” 

“It means they will shoot us, if they can,” 
Bill asserted promptly. 

“ It means just that,” Munro agreed. 



THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 47 

“And the Everglades and the forests will 
tell no tales/’ 

“ We must be better scouts than they 
are,” the Seminole observed quietly. 

“And we are going to be more dan¬ 
gerous,” Bill exclaimed, seizing his rifle, 
pulling his pistol from the holster, and 
brandishing his big hunting-knife as if to 
scalp an enemy. 

“ Sit down. Bill,” Munro ordered gruffly, 
but with an ill-suppressed smile. “ Don’t 
act like a wild Comanche. We are not 
ready for a war dance. Wait until we have 
won a great battle.” 

For some time the three men sat in silence, 
gazing at the dying fire. Then the sergeant 
arose and grasped Hanowa’s right hand. 

“ Hanowa,” he spoke, “ you and I have 
long been friends, ever since we met in our 
canoes on the bay and you told me to paddle 
fast for shore because a big storm was com¬ 
ing. I reached the shore, but three other 
soldiers were drowned. You know the 
weather, and you know all the secret trails 
of the Seminoles in the Everglades and in 
the Big Cypress Swamp. We will follow 


48 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

yx)u, Bill and I; we will follow you on the 
trail of Holtess and Sokala.” 

“It is well, Elaha/' replied Hanowa, 
shaking the hand of his older brother. “We 
will go and look for the trail of Sokala and 
the bad white man. On the river Mayakka 
we shall begin to look for them.’’ 

Before Hanowa had finished speaking,. 
Bill rushed out of the cabin, and when 
Munro called for him. Bill’s answer came 
from the big horizontal limb of a giant live 
oak, which had long served Bill as a gym¬ 


nasium. 


CHAPTER VI 


When Munro asked Major Belton for 
the paper with a big red seal, the major 
tried to dissuade him from the plan of try¬ 
ing to capture Holtess and Sokala. 

“ Sergeant, you will never see those two 
rascals. By this time they have probably 
lost the money in the gambling dens of 
Havana. The Government has already for¬ 
gotten that thousand dollars. You had bet¬ 
ter forget it, too.” 

“ Well, Major,” replied Munro, “ the 
Government can afford to forget a thousand 
dollars, but you know about half of that 
stolen sum was my own money, which it had 
taken me five years to save. It is not so easy 
for me to forget that five hundred dollars.” 

“ I can see your point,” the major adt 
mitted, “ but I think you and Bill are tak¬ 
ing a mighty long chance. You will be 
killed on your treasure-hunting and thief- 
catching trip. Moreover, as I told you, 
those two rogues are in Cuba by this time.” 

49 


50 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“ I don’t believe they are, Major,” Munro 
began to explain. “ That request I made of 
you for a boat-load of soldiers was a part of 
a ruse my friend Hanowa put over on the 
rascals. He had his old uncle, Tallahassee, 
visit the camp of the thieves on the Mayakka 
and in a casual way the old chief told them 
that a Government boat was patrolling the 
coast for them. I suspect he has added that 
you had offered a big reward for their cap¬ 
ture and had requested the Governor of 
Cuba to watch for them and put them in the 
dungeon of the Mole of Havana. I think 
Holtess has seen the inside of a Spanish 
dungeon before, and he will not go near 
Cuba.” 

“ I declare,” the major admitted with a 
hearty laugh, “ your Seminole friends are 
pretty good on strategy. I believe you have 
kept those fellows off the sea. But where 
are they? They have fifty thousand square 
miles of the greatest wilderness in the world 
to hide in.” 

“We have sort of figured it out,” Mimro 
replied, “ that they will keep in hiding in or 
near the Big Cypress Swamp and along the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 51 

northern edge of the Everglades. They will 
try slowly to work across the peninsula to 
St. Augustine, where Holtess will attempt 
to get a ship to New York. Or, if this plan 
fails, or seems too dangerous, they will try 
to reach the headwaters of the St. Johns 
River. They will cautiously work their way 
down this broad river to Jacksonville, where 
Holtess will try to take a boat for New 
York or any other eastern city. We figure 
that they will take their time so that the 
robbery at Fort Brooke may be forgotten. 
Of course, if they have caught a boat for 
Cuba they have given us the slip, but we 
don’t think they have.” 

When Munro also told the major what 
made him believe that Holtess actually had 
the stolen money, the major grew wildly 
interested. 

“ Hang it. Sergeant,” he exclaimed, 
throwing down his hat, “ if I were not tied 
up with this beastly war, I would apply for 
a year’s leave and ask you to let me join 
your party. You were always a sort of a 
long-headed, cautious daredevil. Sergeant. 
I see where you, and Bill, and your Sem- 


52 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


inole, will have loads of hair-raising adven¬ 
ture, while my men and I are shut up in 
this dead old fort. Sometimes it is hard 
luck to be an officer.” 

♦ 

“ Major, if you could join us, we could 
wage quite a little war of our own,” rejoined 
Munro, “ and there would be enough of us 
so that no enemy would ever catch us all 
asleep.” 

The interest which the major had shown 
in the venture emboldened Munro to ask if 
it would be possible to have a few hundred 
rounds of ammunition issued to his party. 

It would be a great help. 

‘‘ Bless your soul. Sergeant,” the major 
cried, “ you can have a thousand,—all you 
can carry. We have loads of it. If I only 
had something for my men to do, I should 
be happy. I had to put three of them in 
the guard house last night. Just imagine. 
Sergeant, the scamps were playing poker 
and started a free-for-all fight about a jack¬ 
pot of seventy-five cents. American soldiers 
are the finest men in the world when there 
is hard marching or fighting to do, but they 
are like a bunch of rowdy schoolboys when 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 53 


they have to sit around on garrison duty. 
When do you march, Sergeant? ” 

“We wish to get off to-morrow, if pos¬ 
sible.” 

“ Well, I will draw up a fine-looking 
paper for you. I think there is a piece of 
parchment in the office, and I wiU attach the 
biggest red seal you ever saw. And, chuck 
it all. Sergeant, I will do more than that. 
I will offer a reward of five hundred dollars 
for the capture of Holtess, dead or alive.” 

Munro heartily thanked the big, gruff 
major, and arose to go. Before he saluted, 
he remarked, “ Billy will be wild when I 
tell him what you have done for us. Major.” 

“ He can’t be any wilder,” snapped the 
major, “ than I would be, if I could join 
you.” 

Munro found Bill busy grinding his hunt¬ 
ing-knife. He had already packed his sad¬ 
dle-bags, and made a list of provisions and 
utensils to be taken on the trip. 

“ Why can’t we leave to-day? ” Bill 
asked. “ They have a big start of us now.” 

When Munro told of his talk with the 
major. Bill let out a Seminole war-whoop: 


54 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

*'Yo-ho~eehee, Yo-ho-eeheel ,We shall have 
enough balls and powder for a year. If the 
big major went along, the four of us could 
lick a dozen men any time. But,” he added 
soberly, “ it would be awfully easy to hit 
him, and he could hide only behind a big 
tree. I bet he could lift up Holtess with 
one hand and shake him like a rat.” 

“ Easy now, Billy. Go a bit easy,” 
Munro cautioned. “ It may take us the bet¬ 
ter j)art of the year to catch the rascals, if 
we ever get our eyes on them at all. We 
may depend on it, they will lie low for a 
month or two, if they bit on the story Talla¬ 
hassee told them. And you may be sure, 
Billy, we cannot teach Sokala anything 
about hiding in the great wilderness of his 
own people.” 

If three men were to plan a long mid¬ 
winter journey in the region of the Great 
Lakes, which would mean Minnesota, On¬ 
tario, Wisconsin, and Michigan, they would 
have to heed a warning which an old Sioux 
Indian gave to one of the early missionaries: 
“ You must take great care,” he told the 
white man, “ that you do not freeze your 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 55 


hands and your feet. If you freeze your 
hands, you cannot build a fire; and if you 
freeze your feet, you cannot travel.” 

Hanowa and his two white friends did not 
have to worry about the possibility of freez¬ 
ing their hands and feet, for all Florida has 
a sub-tropical climate, where some flowers 
are in bloom the year round; while the ex¬ 
treme southern edge of the peninsula and 
the islands known as the Florida Keys are in 
the tropics. 

In the northern forests, although game 
might be abundant in places and the lakes 
might teem with fish, cold weather and deep 
snows often made hunting difficult or im¬ 
possible; and being compelled to cut holes 
through two feet of ice made fishing as dif¬ 
ficult as hunting. Our northern Indians 
suffered much from a scarcity of food 
almost every winter, and sometimes a himter 
actually starved to death, because the 
weather was too cold to hunt, or because he 
could not find the game. 

The Seminoles of Florida never suffered 
such hardships. Their country was a para¬ 
dise for many kinds of game birds and fish 


56 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

/ 

the year round. At the time of our story^ 
they had lived there nearly a hundred years, 
and naturally they refused to leave and be 
taken to Arkansas, where the climate was 
much colder and all conditions very different 
from those in their own beloved Florida. 

Major Belton gave to Sergeant Munro 
a paper much more impressive than he had 
promised. The text was beautifully en¬ 
grossed on parchment. He had affixed a 
red seal as big as two silver dollars, and the 
major’s wife had tied it up with streamers 
of red, white, and blue ribbons. 

“ The thing ought to impress them,” the 
major spoke, laughing. Those ribbons 
were my lady’s idea. I have been wonder¬ 
ing,” he continued, “ why I could not write 
the kind of letter we talked of to the Spanish 
governor of Cuba. I would write as a 
private citizen, of course. Lieutenant Lo- 
reno can set the thing up in pure Castilian 
Spanish and it might do you some good. 
I’ll do it, Munro, just for the fun of it. 
And, Sergeant, I’ll do another good turn for 
you. I will offer a reward of two hundred 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 57 


dollars for the apprehension of that Semi¬ 
nole fellow, Sokala, I believe you call him. 
Why should I not? By the time we get 
through with this war, if we ever do get 
through, it will have cost the Government 
about $25,000 for every Seminole we cap¬ 
ture or induce peaceably to leave for Arkan¬ 
sas, so I think it is not very likely that 
General Jessup or the War Department will 
disapprove my offers of a total of $700 for 
the capture of these two men. If I should 
think of anything else to further your plans, 
I shall do it. It is my rotten luck I cannot 
join you. Send me a message, if possible. 

“And now, good-bye and good luck to 
you. Sergeant! You three men will need 
all the good luck there is in Florida.” 


CHAPTER VII 


“ Elaha^ are you going to travel in that 
soldier’s coat? ” asked Hanowa, when the 
packs had been made up and Bill had 
brought the horses to be saddled. 

“ I am fond of that old coat; it is just 
right for cool mornings and evenings,” 
Munro answered. “ I took off the brass 
buttons and sewed on black buttons so it 
would not look like a soldier’s coat.” 

“ If the Seminoles see that coat they will 
not believe what I tell them, and what the 
major’s paper tells them,” Hanowa replied. 
“ They will say: "Iste lockse, that man is a 
liar. He is not our friend, for he wears the 
coat of the long-knives.’ The old men and 
the women and children will all hide in the 
swamps, but the warriors will fight.” 

“ How shall we dress. Bill and I? ” asked 
Mimro. “ It would be no use for us to dress 
like Indians, for our faces are white.” 

“ You must dress like Crackers,” Han- 
owa requested. " Elaha must dress like a 
big Cracker, and Echosee must dress like a 

58 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINTOLE 59 

little Cracker. In old clothes you must 
dress.” 

At this request Munro picked up his and 
Bill’s military overcoats and went to the 
fort, from which he soon returned with two 
old civilian coats. 

“ There, they ought to be old enough,” 
he remarked. “ I had a hard time making 
the hostler believe that I really wanted to 
swap two perfectly good coats for these 
rags. If Martha saw us in these togs she 
would say: ‘ You two men look like Ichabod 
Crane and his son.’ No Cracker ever wore 
worse-looking rags.” 

At last the happy moment arrived for 
Bill, when, with his father and Hanowa, he 
rode away from Fort Brooke and Tampa 
Bay into the great wilderness to the south. 
The Seminole scout acted as leader and Bill 
brought up the rear, but a good deal of the 
tune the horsemen rode all three abreast, 
for in those days there were no roads and 
very few well-worn trails south of Tampa 
Bay. The country was a primitive wilder¬ 
ness, inhabited by the Seminole Indians, by 
deer, bear, wolves, wild turkeys, and count- 


60 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


less water birds of many kinds. There was 
also much small game. In the swamps and 
in the Everglades snakes were not rare, 
especially during the summer months, and 
the larger rivers and lakes were inhabited, 
one might almost say, by herds of alligators, 
while the waters of streams and lakes, and 
the shallow bays of the sea, literally 
swarmed with fish of many kinds. 

The three horsemen were not heavily 
loaded. Each man carried a roll of two 
blankets and some extra clothing, and a por¬ 
tion of the ammunition. They were well 
armed. Each one carried steel, flint, and 
tinder; but of provisions they had taken very 
little,—plenty of tea, a little green coffee, 
that is, coffee not roasted, salt, pepper, a 
bag of brown sugar, a slab of bacon, a small 
bag of corn flour, and several pounds of dry 
beans. The bacon and flour were intended 
for emergency rations; the men expected to 
live off the country by hunting and fishing. 
Munro had brought a canvas tent, but 
Hanowa had said that he would build him¬ 
self a tent of palm-leaves or grass, the kind 
his own people lived in the year round. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 61 


For some seven hours the red scout led 
the way southward. Sometimes he followed 
a trail made by deer or Seminole warriors 
or by the half-wild cattle of the Indians. 
Early in the afternoon he struck off straight 
east through the pines. After they had trav¬ 
eled a mile in this direction, he halted on a 
dry place behind a hammock densely over¬ 
grown with live oaks, hickories, wild figs, 
magnolias, and other southern trees and 
shrubs. 

“ We camp here,” spoke Hanowa. “ The 
Seminoles cannot see our fire from the trail 
we left, and there is good water in the little 
creek. The moon will be shining and the 
stars, so we shall not need a tent.” 

Then Hanowa started the fire, watered 
the horses, and tied each to a separate tree; 
Bill fetched a pail of water and split an arm¬ 
ful of “ lightwood,” which is the Florida 
name for fat pine wood, so filled with rosin 
that it burns like a torch. Munro acted as 
cook, and in a short time all three were 
ready for a feast. 

A liberal supply of corn bread brought 
from home he heated and browned in the 


62 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


frying-pan; he made a pailful of rich coffee, 
and there was brown sugar for every one to 
sweeten his cup to his taste. The second 
frying-pan was filled with fragrant, sizzling 
bacon. When the supply ran low, he added 
more of the red-striped slices, and he set out 
a bagful of sweet ripe oranges for dessert. 

“We do not know what is before us,” he 
remarked, when he had announced supper, 
“ but to-night we shall have a feast.” 

Although no rain was expected. Bill had 
set up the tent and the Seminole had built 
himself a brush hut, both for protection from 
the dew. By the time the meal was finished 
and the few dishes had been washed, the sun 
was sinking behind the hammock. 

For a while the three men sat around the 
fire which Bill kept supplied with pieces of 
lightwood. The flames threw a weird ruddy 
glare over the faces of the men and the near¬ 
by pines, but shut out the forest a few yards 
off with a wall of black darkness. 

When most of Bill’s lightwood was con¬ 
sumed, Munro poured water on the fire and 
suggested that they all go to bed for a good 
sleep, so as to be ready for to-morrow’s long 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 63 

ride to the Mayakka. Munro and Hanowa 
being used to camping in all kinds of places 
soon fell asleep, but Bill, although he was 
very tired after the long ride, could not 
sleep, for it was his first experience in camp¬ 
ing at night in the wild forest. 

The grunting, rubbing, and feeding noises 
made by mules, horses, and oxen in the stock 
barn at Fort Brooke had never kept Bill 
awake. He just loved to sleep in the hay 
with the hostler, and did so, as often as he 
could coax his father or mother to let him 
spend a night in the fort. In this matter 
Bill was fully as diplomatic as boys and girls 
are nowadays. If his father said “ no,” Bill 
tried his mother for a “ yes ” ; and if his 
mother had refused, he tried his father for 
a permit. 

But now in the tent in the moonlit woods 
Bill lay wide awake, listening with a palpi¬ 
tating heart to all kinds of noises. There 
were two or three creatures nosing around in 
the brush. “ It must be a ’possum or a 
skunk,” thought Bill. ‘‘ What could I do if 
a skunk came into the tent? ” He listened 
more intently. The ’possum or skunk was 


64 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

going away from the tent, but now he heard 
a smaller noise close to the tent. 

“ Father,” he called, “ a rattlesnake is 
coming in.” 

Munro sat up and listened. “ Nonsense, 
Bill,” he declared, “it is a mouse rustling 
for the crumbs of corn bread you dropped 
in front of the tent. Lie down, and go to 
sleep.” 

Bill tried to, but presently he heard other 
noises. There was somebody walking near 
the creek! Now he stepped kerplunk into 
the water! Bill sat up and looked out. 
There he was, a tall dark shape! 

“ Look, Father, do you see that Indian? 
I saw him move just now,” Bill whispered. 

“ Billy, you are looking at a tall dark 
stump, and the shadow seemed to move 
because you moved,” Munro said, trying to 
quiet the lad. But it did not occur to the 
veteran soldier to tell the excited boy that a 
moonlit night in the woods is far more 
spooky to a novice than a pitch-dark night, 
when no forms and shadows are visible. 

Bill lay down again and wished he could 
go to sleep. But now a piercing noise cut 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 65 

the stillness of the night. Although it set 
Bill wide awake again, he was not fright¬ 
ened, for he knew it was the sharp snort, or 
whistle, of a buck in the thicket of the ham¬ 
mock. Three or four times the sharp snort 
cut the silence, before the buck began to 
stamp and thrash about in the brush on the 
edge of the hammock. 

“ Go to it, old fellow!” Bill thought to 
himself. “ It is lucky for you that it is not 
daylight. I guess I will go to sleep.’’ 

And then came a sound from the ham¬ 
mock, which made Bill jump. A big owl 
gave vent to his unearthly “ who-whoo, 
who-whoo, who-whoo.” Bill knew that 
sound. But was it really an owl? Every¬ 
body knew how deceivingly the Indians 
could imitate the calls of birds and beasts. 
Hanowa had often fooled Bill with the calls 
of owls, wild turkeys, and quails. Again 
the owl hooted and another one answered 
him. If Bill had not heard Hanowa mutter, 
“ Owls, big owls! ” he would have been 
uncertain whether he heard owls or Indians. 

The fact that Hanowa was not so very 
dead asleep quieted Bill. I guess I have 


66 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


heard all the noises now/’ he thought. “ I 
might as well go to sleep.” But when he 
was just dozing off, the strangest sound of 
all awakened him again. Greatly startled 
he sat up. 

“ Father,” he called, “ I heard a cannon 
or thunder. Or maybe it was a bull. It 
woke me up.” 

“A big allapataw bull you heard,” Han- 
owa told the boy. “ He lives in a pond a 
mile away.' 

Billy,” Munro added, “ you have heard 
all the noises now, and you are making more 
noise yourself than all the animals. If you 
don’t keep quiet now and close your ears 
and your mouth, you go straight back to 
Fort Brooke to-morrow morning.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


Munro^s threat to Bill that he would have 
to go back to Fort Brooke if he did not keep 
still had the desired effect. Moreover, the 
lad felt now assured that he had nothing to 
fear from snakes or Indians and he knew 
enough about alligators to feel sure that the 
old goggle-eyed beast that lived in a pond a 
mile away, would not come to pay him a 
nightly visit. So Bill adjusted the blanket- 
roll under his head and very soon he was 
asleep. 

When he awoke in the morning, he was 
alone in the tent. His father was sitting at 
the camp-fire cooking breakfast, and Han- 
owa had tied the horses in new places so 
that they could find a little more food, 
because the winter pasture among the Flor¬ 
ida pines is not rich. Hanowa was splitting 
fat pine wood, and Bill wondered what they 
were going to do with more lightwood, when 
the woods were flooded with sunlight. 

Father! ” he called. “ It’s a fine morn- 

67 


68 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

ing. Look at the dew glittering on every¬ 
thing. It won’t be there long, but the brush 
is certainly wet and I am glad we brought 
a tent.” 

By the time Bill had taken a quick 
morning bath in the creek, breakfast was 
ready, and the lad had become very curious 
as to what his father had in the frying-pans, 
for like all good cooks, Munro always put 
covers on his pans and kettles, and once 
more he had prepared a surprise for his 
companions. 

“Billy, guess what is in the pans?” he 
asked. “ If you guess wrong, you go with¬ 
out breakfast.” 

“ I know what it smells like,” Bill 
answered promptly, “ but I am afraid to 
guess, because you cannot have what it 
smells like.” 

“A good cook can have anything,” the 
father retorted. “ Speak up. Son, I give 
you three guesses.” 

“Then I’ll take a chance. Beefsteak! 
Beefsteak and sweet potatoes! ” 

“ Right you are. Bill. Pass your plate. 
I brought a big piece of the very best steak 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 69 

from the fort. I put a little salt on it and 
wrapped it in clean paper. It was my inten¬ 
tion to have it for our first dinner on the 
Mayakka, but the day is going to be warm 
and I was afraid that by to-night it would 
be tainted. It will be our last beefsteak for 
a long time. So eat it slowly, and with the 
proper devotion.” 

By this time Hanowa had also received 
his portion of the fragrant steak and the 
browned sweet potatoes, of which he was 
very fond. He received his share of the food 
on his tin plate, but according to Indian cus¬ 
tom, he preferred to eat without the use of 
fork and knife. 

“ Do you understand what it means to eat 
with the proper devotion? ” Munro turned 
to him. 

“ Big words for me,” the Seminole replied 
with a smile. 

“ It means eat slowly,” Munro explained, 
and think you are lucky.” 

‘‘ I understand. I am lucky,” Hanowa 
admitted, “ but deer meat is just as good as 
ox meat.” 

‘‘ It is for the Seminoles,” the sergeant 


70 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


asserted, “ but not for a white man. Beef 
and pork are the meats for white men, and 
beef is the best. The soldiers never tire of 
fresh beef. They also like fresh pork, but 
pork spoils too quickly in warm weather; 
that is the reason why the quartermasters do 
not issue pork to the soldiers in warm 
weather.” 

Hanowa’s eves flashed, as if Munro had 
said something that did not please the 
Indian. 

Elaha/^ he began after a brief silence, 
“ you forget that my people do not like to 
be called Seminoles. That word means, 
‘ Runaways.’ The Indians who go to 
Arkansas are Seminoles. Those of us who 
stay in Florida are Kan-yuk-sa Islis-cate; 
Peninsula red men, we call ourselves. Some 
of my people will never go to Arkansas; the 
soldiers will never capture them all. I shall 
never go.” 

“ I beg your pardon,” Munro spoke ear¬ 
nestly. “ You know we white people mean 
no harm when we use the word ‘ Seminole ’ 
for your people in Florida. We should call 
you by your own name, but we are a little 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 71 

bit dumb about learning the languages of 
the Indians. We must all,—red men and 
white men—^make ‘ Seminole ’ a good word. 
White men cannot learn your name for 
Seminole; it is too long and too hard for us 
to say.” 

Elaha, perhaps you have heard that our 
kinsmen, the Creeks, first called us Semi- 
noles. That was about a hundred years ago, 
when my ancestors left the Creeks in Geor¬ 
gia and went to Florida and found it a good 
land. 

“ You use Seminole as a good name, so I 
shall use it as a good word; and, it may be, 
that some day it will be a good word in all 
places and to all men.” 

After breakfast Bill washed the dishes 
and took down the tent, while Hanowa sad¬ 
dled the horses and Munro made the packs 
ready. 

“ Boots and Saddles! Boots and Sad¬ 
dles ! ” he called in long-drawn-out tone, as 
a modern announcer calls the trains in a 
large railway station. 

After a ride of about two hours they 
crossed a beautiful stream, which Hanowa 


72 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

told his companions was the Manatee. On 
some open prairies and marshes near the 
river they saw many large wading birds, and 
on patches of open ponds and the river 
thousands of wild ducks were having a gay 
time. Many large white birds were perched 
on the moss-draped branches and tops of 
the live oaks and other trees along the river, 
and Bill wanted very much to stop and hunt 
for an hour, but Hanowa would not wait. 

“ We must travel,” he said. ‘‘ To-night 
we must camp on the Mayakka. It is bad 
to make camp after the sun has sunk into 
the sea, and we have still a long way to go.” 

When the sun stood in the south, they 
halted for half an hour. The horses had a 
drink and were allowed to pick a little food, 
while the men ate a few hardtack biscuits 
and drank some hot tea in the shade of a 
grove of palms, which grew on the edge of 
a hammock. 

During most of the day, except while the 
horsemen were near the Manatee, they had 
traveled through open pine woods, so char¬ 
acteristic of Florida. It always looked as 
if in the distance they would reach thick 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 73 

timber, and again and again Bill thought 
they would have to change their direction, 
but always the trees seemed to scatter as the 
riders approached. Not only was there 
plenty of space between the trees for the 
horsemen to pass; they would have met no 
difficulty if they had been traveling in a big 
army wagon. The pine-trees gave very little 
shade; the ground was covered with the ever¬ 
present low saw-palmetto, but there was no 
real underbrush such as one finds in nearly 
all northern forests. The travelers saw a 
few robins, bluebirds, and blackbirds, but of 
animal life there was very little. They 
passed a number of places where the gophers 
had been digging and saw a few of the 
animals, but before Bill could dismount and 
catch them, each animal had disappeared in 
the loose sandy soil, for they are remarkably 
fast diggers. It must be remembered that 
the Florida gopher is a turtle about the size 
of a large northern mud-turtle. These so- 
called gophers always live on land, and are 
vegetarians in their feeding habits. 

About the middle of the afternoon the 
travelers passed out of the monotonous flat- 


74 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


woods and entered open prairies interspersed 
with marshes and wooded hammocks. Here 
bird life became at once immensely abun¬ 
dant. There were flocks of the roseate 
spoonbills, thousands of large white birds, 
the snow-white herons and wood ibises, and 
Munro recognized a few great blue herons 
he used to meet in marshes in New York 
State. The open ponds were full of ducks, 
and Bill again begged for a shot at them. 
But Hanowa would not hear of firing any 
guns. 

“We have no time to hunt now,” he 
spoke. “ Only fool white men fire guns all 
the time and shoot at everything they see. 
They shoot from boats, from wagons, from 
horses. Then they go away and leave what 
they have killed. It is very bad and some 
day the Great Spirit will punish them by 
taking all the large birds and animals away 
from them.” 

Soon a long belt of broad-leaved timber 
appeared in view. Hanowa pointed to this 
dense forest and said: “ The river Mayakka 
flows in that timber. We camp there to¬ 
night.” 


CHAPTER IX 


The sun was still two hours high, when 
Hanowa stopped under a large live oak, 
draped with long dull-grayish beards of 
Spanish moss. A broad sluggish river flowed 
in a beautiful horseshoe curve around the 
camp site on three sides, and only a few rods 
to the east lay a grassy meadow, where the 
horses could And a real meal. 

As soon as Planowa had staked out the 
horses, he called Bill. “ Come, Echosee/^ 
he invited him, “ you and I must hunt meat 
for our supper, while your father builds the 
camp and lies down for a little rest.” 

At last the moment had arrived for which 
Bill had longed. Without delay he and 
Hanowa walked up-stream so as to have the 
sun behind them and to their left. They 
soon came to a place where a large flock of 
ducks, teal, mallards and pintails were feed¬ 
ing and playing on a shallow pond. The 
birds showed by their behavior that they had 
not been hunted since they came from the 

75 


76 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


North to their southern winter home, be¬ 
cause they allowed the hunters to approach 
within thirty yards, while they continued 
quacking, flapping their wings, and feeding 
with their tails up in the air. Bill looked 
at the ducks and then at Hanowa, but the 
Indian shook his head and said, “We don’t 
want them; they are not worth a shot. We 
should find better game in this country.” 

Beyond the pond and marsh they came to 
an open glade, where Bill spied a flock of 
turkeys. These birds, however, were much 
wilder than the ducks. As soon as they saw 
the hunters they started to run away from 
them, and when the hunters followed on a 
run, the big birds took flight with a loud, 
rapid beating of wings. Bill raised his gun, 
but Hanowa touched his arm, saying, 
“ Don’t fire. Little Brother, you cannot hit 
one on the wing with a rifle.” One of the 
birds alighted in the top of a tree, and when 
Bill had slowly approached it within fifty 
yards, he fired, but so excited was the young 
hunter that he never touched a feather of 
the large bird. 

“ Buck fever! ” said Hanowa. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 77 


“ No, turkey fever! ” Bill exclaimed with 
much disgust. “ I am glad Father did not 
see that.” 

A little later Bill had better luck and 
brought down two fat turkeys, and the 
hunters returned to camp in triumph. 

Munro greeted them with, “ Dress your 
game, men. The cook is waiting.” 

The sergeant had a hot fire going in a 
hollow, trough-shaped log. On each side of 
the fire he had set a forked stick. He 
pushed a slender pole through the turkey 
and laid the pole in the forks, with the bird 
over the fire. From time to time he turned 
the bird, and in a little more than half an 
hour he sang out in imitation of the soldiers’ 
mess call: 

‘‘ Turkey, turkey, turkey. 

Get your fat and lean. 

Coffee, coffee, coffee. 

Not a single bean.” 

“ Eat, men,” he invited his companions. 

That turkey looks and smells as good as 
any bird that Martha ever roasted in a reg¬ 
ular oven. And you will find that the coffee 


78 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

is coffee, for I put in plenty of ground 
beans. We eat the last of our corn bread 
and sweet potatoes to-night, and to-morrow 
we go on an all-meat diet. Billy, you go 
easy on the coffee, or you will again be see¬ 
ing snakes and Indians to-night.’* 

Before it grew dark, each man gathered 
an armful of Spanish moss for his bed. 
Then Munro put more wood on the fire, 
Hanowa kept a red flame going with pieces 
of lightwood which he had brought from the 
pine woods, and the three travelers stretched 
out around the fire for a comfortable talk. 

“ Hanowa, although you have found out 
for us several things we needed to know very 
much,” Munro began, “ there is one more 
question to which I should like to have an 
answer. I have turned the question over 
and over in my mind, but I have no answer. 
Why does Sokala act as guide to that worth¬ 
less white man? Did he help him steal the 
money? And does he expect a share of it? ” 
Elaha, you know well,” Hanowa re¬ 
plied, “ that the Seminoles are honest men. 
There are very few thieves and liars among 
them,—not nearly so many as there are 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 79 


among white people. They took no money 
and watches from the men of Major Dade 
who fell in the big fight last year. 

“ I think Holtess has told Sokala a big 
lie and made him a big promise, which he 
will not keep. Sokala is a young man. He 
does not know Holtess and the lies and 
tricks of a bad white man. His eyes and 
ears are keen; he is a very good scout in the 
swamp and the Everglades, but his head is 
not keen.” 

“You mean he is dumb,” Bill broke in. 

“ Yes, he is dumb,” Hanowa admitted, 
“ but he can find the trails and hiding-places 
of his people. To-morrow we shall visit the 
camp of Tallahassee and ask him where 
Holtess and Sokala have gone.” 

All three of the men were tired and 
sleepy after their long journey, and not long 
after the sun had set they were ready for 
bed. But before they rolled up in their 
blankets, they went to look at the winding, 
slowly flowing river. Groups of tall palms 
reached up above the mass of live oaks and 
other trees, whose branches formed a dense 
mass and cast a solid black shadow on the 


80 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

ground. Through this dark sub-tropical 
forest curved and twisted the broad placid 
river, and from its smooth surface, moon and 
stars were reflected so perfectly as to give 
Bill the feeling that they were set on a 
firmament miles below. The lad shrank back 
from the high bank on which he was stand¬ 
ing. He felt that he might drop down and 
down into space if the river bank should 
give way and keep on falling until he was 
hurled among the stars near the moon. 

“ Let us go back. Father; I am afraid in 
this place,” he confessed frankly. “ I shall 
never forget this night.” 

“ Little Brother,” said Hanowa, “ you will 
see many things on this trip that you will 
not forget. You will see some to-morrow.” 

As they turned toward their camp, the 
forest appeared as a world in black bounded 
by lofty trunks and crowns of palms and by 
moss and vine-draped live oaks and other 
spreading trees. 

After the darkness of night had fully 
settled over the forest, there were more noises 
on the Mayakka than around the camp in 
the pine woods. Owls hooted in the big trees 


TfiTE BOAST OP THE SEMINOLE 81 


above and around the camp; in the distance 
some wolves were howling; and fish, otters, 
and alligators, each in their own way, stirred 
the water in the river; while flocks of ducks 
passed over the tree-tops on whistling wings. 
Many other sounds and noises were carried 
through the air, but Billy heard none of 
them; he slept as soundly as if he lay curled 
up in his bunk at Fort Brooke. 


CHAPTER X 


The first new experience Bill had in the 
morning was an all-meat breakfast. 

‘‘ Get up, Bill,” Munro called, “ and see 
how nicely browned your turkey is. You 
need not hurry, Billy. The turkey is not 
very big; he is just a nice fat spring turkey. 
I think Hanowa and I can manage him 
without your help.” 

“Oh no. Father! I will do my share,” 
Bill spoke up, wide awake. “ But I did 
sleep! I never heard a sound of anything.” 

On account of some repairs that had to be 
made on Bill’s saddle, the three men did not 
start for Tallahassee’s camp until late in the 
afternoon. After they had ridden south¬ 
ward along the edge of the forest for about 
an hour, Hanowa halted. 

“We are now not far from the camp of 
Tallahassee,” he said. “ Some of the young 
warriors may have returned from the With- 
lacoochee, since I was here. If we ride to 
the camp on our horses, the warriors will see 

82 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 83 

US first, and I do not know what they may 
do if Tallahassee is not at home.” 

Then let us hide our horses and go to the 
camp on foot,” suggested Munro. “ Being 
fired at by men I cannot see is not at all to 
my taste.” 

But somebody might steal our horses,” 
Bill objected. “ It would be awful walking 
through this scrub palmetto and all the other 
brush and vines, and through the water in 
the low places.” 

“ If any Indian finds our horses, he will 
bring them to Tallahassee’s camp,” Hanowa 
declared. ‘‘ There is no other Seminole camp 
for many miles around. We must go to his 
camp on foot.” 

They might have walked a quarter of a 
mile, when they came within sight of a dense 
patch of broad-leaved timber known in Flor¬ 
ida to this day as a hammock. A hammock 
is an island in a swamp or in the Everglades, 
but in the pine woods a hammock is a large 
or small patch of broad-leaved trees. 

‘‘ There is Tallahassee’s camp,” the Sem¬ 
inole pointed out, on that hammock ahead 
of us.” 


84 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

‘‘I do not see any camp,” Bill answered, 
“ and I do not see or hear a soul,—^just some 
birds flying around and singing.” 

Echo see, have you forgotten what I told 
you? ” Hanowa reminded the lad. “ Have 
you forgotten that no white man ever sees a 
Seminole who d^es not wish to be seen? You 
do not see a Seminole camp before you are 
in it. 

“ We must lean our guns against this tree 
and leave them here. Elaha, you must tie 
your big white rag to a stick and carry it 
high up. Then we must walk through the 
water to the hammock, and we must walk 
abreast, not very close together, so that one 
bullet can hit only one man.” 

“ Is that the way we have to approach a 
Seminole camp?” Bill grumbled. “They 
can shoot us like dogs or make us prisoners. 
Do we have to hang up our pistols, too? ” 

“ Don’t be ugly, Bill,” Munro repri¬ 
manded the lad, “ and do as you are told.” 

“We can keep our pistols and knives in 
their cases,” Hanowa said, “ but we must 
not touch them with our hands.” 

Slowly and in the open the three men 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 85 

waded Imee-deep through the water sur¬ 
rounding the hammock. 

“ Great Scott! whispered BiU. “ Father, 
this is pretty creepy business. Do you see 
my hair standing up? I can feel it rising.” 

They had now reached the edge of the 
timber. For two or three rods they walked 
through a dense forest of live oaks, pond 
apples, coco plums, poison-wood, and 
strangling wild figs. Then they stepped 
suddenly into a clearing of some two acres. 
Toward one side of the clearing stood a 
structure of poles with a roof of grass and 
palm-leaves. 

“ Look at the hay shed,” whispered Bill, 
“ but the hay is all gone.” 

‘‘ That is no hay shed,” Hanowa replied 
with a smile. “ It is Tallahassee’s camp.” 

The camp was a shed without walls, hut it 
had a floor of split palmetto trunks, raised 
some three feet off the ground. The place 
seemed utterly deserted, although a few 
blankets on the floor, a few pieces of clothing, 
and a few bags hung from the beams under 
the roof showed that people had been here 
recently. Under a smaller shed close by, a 


86 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


fire was smouldering on the ground, fed by 
small logs arranged radially and pushed in 
as the ends had burnt off. A few kettles 
stood near the fire and under the shed hung 
the hind quarter of a deer. There was also 
a log with several mortar holes. The holes 
contained some white substance, and near 
the log lay two wooden pestles. 

It looks as if they stopped their work 
and ran,” Munro remarked. 

“ That is it,” Hanowa agreed. “ They 
have dropped their sticks and run.” 

With those words he took a large ox horn 
off its peg and with it he gave three long 
blasts. Bill, who had been looking the other 
way when the first blast came, threw his 
hands up to his ears and uttered a yell, while 
his face was the very picture of a deadly 
frightened boy. 

When the sounds of the blast had scarcely 
died away, something happened which would 
have scared Bill still more, if that had been 
possible. Two young Seminoles with long 
hunting rifles stepped out of the woods near 
the main camp. They were not pointing 
their guns at their visitors, but they carried 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 87 


them ready for instant action. However, 
although the two men might be stern war¬ 
riors, the visitors realized at once that at this 
moment the two were not thinking of scalps 
and war, for both were shaking with ill- 
suppressed laughter. 

“ Confound those fellows,” thought Bill, 
when he saw them coming, “ they are laugh¬ 
ing at me. How can a fellow help getting 
scared when he is thinking of nothing, and 
all at once he hears a bull bellowing in his 
ears? I would like to try it on them. I 
bet they would be scared.” 

The two young warriors approached their 
visitors, and there was the usual exchange 
of salutations, Hanowa and his white friends 
acting as guests, and the two men with the 
long guns, as hosts. These two young war¬ 
riors had by this time regained the usual 
serious expression of an Indian countenance, 
which may have contributed in establishing 
among white people the opinion that the 
Indians as a people are always in a serious 
and stolid mood; that they have no sense of 
humor, and that they seldom laugh. The 
fact is that Indians have a keen sense of fun 


88 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


and humor, and like to play jokes on one 
another. That they are reticent to strangers 
whose motives of visiting them and whose 
language they do not imderstand, is quite 
natural. In that respect they resemble chil¬ 
dren and uneducated people generally, the 
world over. 

The five men now present at the camp 
had not been seated long at the fire, when 
others mysteriously came in. The old chief, 
Tallahassee, came stalking out of the timber 
into his melon patch, and a dugout with two 
women and several children came gliding 
through the saw-grass. Bill accidentally 
caught a glimpse of them just before they 
landed. 

Each side was now convinced that the 
other meant no harm, and the women at once 

% 

set about preparing a meal for their visitors, 
as people did in Bible times and long before. 
In the canoe was a boy about Bill’s age, who 
carried a bow and a quiver full of arrows. 
He had killed a fat greenhead mallard. His 
name was Malota, at least that is the way 
Bill understood it. When the Indian boy 
learned that Bill could talk Seminole, the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 89 


two boys at once paired off as friends, and in 
a short time Bill had traded his jackknife 
for Malota’s bow and arrows. Both young 
traders were much pleased with their bar¬ 
gain, for Bill had never owned a bow and 
arrows and Malota had never possessed a 
pocket-knife. Bill was a little afraid that 
Malota might want to trade back when he 
discovered that the barefooted Indian boy 
had not a sign of a pocket in his scanty 
clothes, and he felt much relieved when 
Malota tied up his knife in the handkerchief 
he wore around his neck. 

While the women were busy broiling ven¬ 
ison over the fire and baking some light 
brown cakes on a piece of tin, the sergeant 
fried a mess of bacon and made a kettleful 
of coflPee. These two items Munro had 
brought as his contribution to the feast. He 
fried the bacon and made the coffee because 
he was afraid that the Seminole women 
might put the bacon into a stew and that 
they might not know how to make coffee. 
Both hosts and visitors had a real feast. Old 
Tallahassee had not tasted bacon and coffee 
for many moons, and he pronounced the cof- 


90 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

fee, sweetened with cane syrup, “ Heap good 
black drink.” 

“What is it?” asked Bill, when he had 
eaten one of the sweetish cakes. 

“ Coontie/* Malota told him. “We make 
it from a root that grows in the ground.” 

It was dark when the feast was over, and 
when Tallahassee had lit a pipe, Hanowa 
asked, “ Solk-go-chee, my father, where are 
Sokala and the white man? ” 

“ Gone to the Big Cypress Swamp, may¬ 
be,” answered the old man, “ but the moon 
is coming up now and we must sleep. I tell 
my sons to-morrow.” 

Then each visitor was given a blanket and 
shown a place to sleep on the floor of the 
camp. The Indians slept without pillows, 
but each white guest placed an armful of 
dry grass under his head. • Such was Bill’s 
first visit at a Seminole camp. 


CHAPTER XI 


After a good meal in the morning and a 
liberal potion of Munro’s black drinl^, Tal¬ 
lahassee fell into a talking mood. 

Sop-po-chee, my son,” he spoke, ad¬ 
dressing Hanowa, “ I went to the camp of 
the white man; Malota went with me. I told 
the white man that soldiers in a boat, with 
guns were going to look for a white man 
and a red man; because the captain of the 
soldiers at Fort Brooke wanted to see them. 
The white man has much hair on his face, 
but I could see that his face grew red and 
that his hands trembled, when he lifted a 
cup to his mouth. 

“ I told him the captain of the soldiers 
had written to the chief at St. Augustine 
and to the big chief of the Spanalkies on the 
big island in the sea. The white man asked 
me many questions; but I did not tell him 
who had told me of the soldiers and of the 
letters. 

The white man grew angry and talked 

91 


<< 


92 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


bad of the soldiers and their chief; and he 
talked in the white man’s tongue to Sokala. 
He thought old Tallahassee did not under¬ 
stand his words. ‘ We fool him/ he said. 
‘ We no go on sea. We go camp long time 
in swamp. No soldier see us, no white man 
see us long time. Soldiers can all go ’way 
down. We shoot him if he follows.’ That 
is what the white man said to Sokala.” 

After this talk the old man fell into a long 
silence, as if the talk had exhausted him; but 
Munro felt that Tallahassee had not yet 
finished his story, and after some time Han- 
owa made bold to ask: “ What else did my 
father learn at the white man’s camp? ” 

“We learned many other things,” Talla¬ 
hassee continued his story. “ When the sun 
sank toward the sea, the white man began to 
cook meat and make tea and Malota sat 
down and talked to Sokala. He told Sokala 
that the chief of the soldiers is angry because 
he has lost something of much value and 
that he may send soldiers in a war canoe to 
look for it; but he did not tell Sokala what 
it is that the white chief has lost. 

“When the white man had cooked his 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 90 

meat, he sat down to eat it and he asked 
Sokala to eat, but he did not ask me and 
Malota to eat and drink with him. Our peo¬ 
ple never let their visitors go away hungry. 
Malota and I went away hungry from the 
white man’s camp.” 

After the old chief had again rested for a 
while he told how he and the boy Malota 
had started for their own camp, and how, 
after dusk, they had returned and had 
silently crept so close to the white man’s 
camp that they could see and hear what was 
going on. 

“And what did my father see and hear? ” 
asked Munro. 

“ My eyes have grown dim and my ears 
dull with great age,” the old man replied 
slowly, “ but Malota’s eyes are keen like the 
eyes of the sandhill crane, and his ears are 
as keen as the ears of Echo, the deer, when 
he hides in the saw-grass from the canoe of 
the hunter. And this is what Malota saw 
and heard: 

“ The white man melted wax of the bees 
in a kettle over the fire. Into the kettle he 
poured a bagful of dollars, white dollars and 


94 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


yellow dollars, and he stirred them with a 
stick in the wax that was boiling in the ket¬ 
tle. Then he took the kettle off the fire and 
set it down in the grass, where the dew would 
fall on it and make the wax and the dollars 
cool. ‘ Now,’ he said, ‘ they will keep still 
and not say “ chink, chink ” in our pack.’ 

“ That is what Malota saw and heard. 
Then the white man and Sokala lay down 
to sleep in their blankets, and Malota and 
I returned to our camp. I have finished.” 

At this point the boy, Malota, took up the 
story. After resting in their own camp for 
a day, the boy and his grandfather had gone 
to the camp of Holtess and Sokala on horse¬ 
back. They had found the camp deserted 
and the trail of the two campers leading 
straight east. For a white man it would 
have been very difficult to follow the trail, 
but the old Seminole and the lad had fol¬ 
lowed it without much trouble. 

“ They are going to cross a creek at a ford 
at the head of a bay,” said Tallahassee. 
“We need not try to follow their trail every 
step. We can pick it up again at the ford.” 

The two scouts now traveled slowly in the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 95 

general direction of the trail, keeping a sharp 
lookout ahead, so as not to betray them¬ 
selves. In the middle of the afternoon they 
heard two shots about a mile ahead. They 
could not be sure who had fired the shots, 
but they decided to make camp for the night 
and take up the trail in the morning. 

“ If they have killed a deer,” said Talla¬ 
hassee in the morning, “ we shall find them 
in camp smoking the meat, but if they 
missed, we shall find that they have gone on 
to the crossing.” 

They found no sign of a camp-fire and 
soon picked up the trail leading eastward. 

‘‘ They have crossed the creek,” Tallahas¬ 
see decided. “We can now travel without 
fear of being seen.” 

But when they reached the crossing, they 
were much disappointed. There were fresh 
tracks of deer and bear, but there was not a 
sign of either horse or man having crossed 
the river. 

“ My son,” spoke Tallahassee, after he 
had carefully examined the ford, “ Sokala is 
a Seminole. We must hide our horses and 
go up the creek on foot to find the place 


96 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

where Sokala and the white man have 
crossed.” 

They found the tracks of the fugitives 
half a mile up-stream. 

‘‘ We must not show ourselves near the 
water,” warned the old chief. /“They are 
afraid of being followed, and may be camp¬ 
ing in the timber on the other bank. We 
hide to-night and follow them to-morrow.” 

They crossed at the ford in the morning 
and soon picked up the trail of the fugitives 
and followed it for about five miles, leading 
almost straight south. At this point the old 
chief stopped and declared that they had 
gone far enough. 

“ They are following the trail to the cross¬ 
ing of the Caloosahatchee,” he concluded, 
“ one of the trails that leads to the hiding 
places of the Big Cypress Swamp. We may 
now return to our camp, my son. We have 
seen enough. We are now sure that they 
are not trying to escape on the sea. They 
are trying to hide. Kill time.” 

Munro was now very desirous to obtain 
from the old chief a general description of 
the country north and south of the Caloosa- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 97 

hatchee, which is the outlet of Lake Okee¬ 
chobee, the largest lake of Florida. 

“ It is a long day’s journey from Peace 
Creek to river Caloosahatchee. Another 
day’s journey to Big Cypress Swamp. Then 
all big swamp and big saw-grass water. 
Then little strip piny woods, then ten thou¬ 
sand islands, then all big sea water and no 
end.” 

That was the old man’s description of the 
wilderness of Southern Florida as it existed 
at the time of our story. 

“ My father,” Munro ventured to ask, 
“ what should we do to find the white man 
and Sokala in that country? ” 

“ My son, you never find him,” the old 
chief replied. “ Country too big, too wild. 
Too much trees, too much water, too much 
saw-grass. No ride, no walk, no canoe. Let 
him white thief go. Maybe Indian kill him.” 

After this discouraging talk from the old 
man, Munro asked Hanowa to ride on a 
little scouting trip with him. In his own 
mind he was wondering if the country was 
as bad as Tallahassee had described it. If 
it was, then he had underestimated the dif- 


98 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


ficulty of capturing Holtess, and perhaps 
they had better let him go. The Indians 
might kill him, or a rattlesnake might finish 
him. 

When Munro and Hanowa were alone, 
the sergeant asked, “ Hanowa, is that coun¬ 
try really as bad as the old man describes 
it?” 

“ Yes, it is as bad,” Hanowa admitted. 
“And in the Big Cypress Swamp and in 
parts of the Everglades, where the saw- 
grass is tallest and thickest, it is worse.” 

“ What can we do with our horses, when 
we reach the Cypress Swamp and the Ever¬ 
glades?” asked Munro. 

“We cannot take them,” replied Han¬ 
owa. “ Maybe they will go back to Fort 
Brooke.” 

“ The horses of Holtess and Sokala ought 
to give us a clue of the whereabouts of the 
fugitives. We ought to be able to find the 
horses,” suggested Mimro. 

“We should be able to find them,” Han¬ 
owa agreed, “ if they have not been killed 
or sold to the Indians.” 


CHAPTER XII 


If Munro had not been firmly convinced 
by this time that Holtess was trying to 
escape with several hundred dollars belong¬ 
ing to the Government and with the hard- 
earned savings of years of his own, he would 
have given up the pursuit. As it was, he 
lay awake the better part of the night fight¬ 
ing the problem out with himself. It is 
difficult for an old sergeant to give up any¬ 
thing he has started. His training has all 
been the other way. If Munro had been 
the kind of man that is ready to quit, when 
he finds obstacles in his path, he never would 
have been a sergeant. 

If Major Belton had said to him, ‘‘ Ser¬ 
geant Munro, you will find one Holtess and 
bring him to Fort Brooke. You will select 
one or two companions and follow him until 
you get him. He is believed to be hiding 
now in the Big Cypress Swamp or in the 
Everglades, and he may try to escape by sea 
either from St. Augustine or Jacksonville. 

99 


100 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


Find him and bring him in, if it takes a 
year to do it,” Munro would have saluted 
and replied, “ Yes, sir, I shall bring him in.” 

And then Sergeant Munro would have 
chosen his companions, made his prepara¬ 
tions, and started after Holtess without loss 
of time, and he would not have worried 
about the difficulty of his task. A good sol¬ 
dier obeys orders. He is a fanatic about 
doing his duty. The difficulty of his job is 
only an incentive. Those are the qualities 
which the world has always admired in a 
good soldier, and an old sergeant in the 
United States army is perhaps the best of 
all soldiers. 

“ Confound this business,” Munro said to 
himself as he sat up in his blanket, “ if the 
major had ordered me to catch that rogue 
I would just dog him until I had caught 
him. Why can’t I do the same thing under 
my own orders? Munro, old man, you can’t 
go back to New York State and tell Martha 
that this scoundrel Holtess was too much 
for you. We have to get him, unless he and 
Sokala are better men than Hanowa and I.” 
And then Munro adjusted the grass pillow 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 101 

under his head and slept soundly until 
morning. 

When he told Hanowa of his decision to 
take up the trail of Holtess, the young Sem¬ 
inole simply replied, “ It will be great fun 
to hunt him in the Cypress Swamp, or in the 
Everglades, or in any other place.” 

“ But, Hanowa,” the sergeant tried to 
draw him out, “ Tallahassee says we shall 
never find him because the swamps and the 
Avilderness and the Everglades are too big 
to hunt down two men who do not wish to 
be found.” 

‘‘ Tallahassee is now an old man,” the 
scout replied. “ If he were a young man, 
or if he were a soldier, he would try it before 
he said it could not be done. Elaha, we must 
try it before we give it up.” 

The two men now set about in earnest to 
prepare for the most difficult hunt they had 
ever undertaken. Although they expected 
to find their food as they went, they knew 
too much about hunter’s and fisherman’s 
luck not to lay in provisions for several days 
ahead, whenever that was possible. They 
dried and smoked the meat of a deer and also 


102 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

a dozen large bass caught in the Mayakka, 
and they traded a knife for a bag of beans. 
They had taken the precaution to bring with 
them a few knives, a dozen awls, a quantity 
of needles and thread, a small bag of beads 
and a few other articles for trading with 
the Seminoles. These trade goods did not 
weigh much and occupied but little space, 
but they might prove very valuable in secur¬ 
ing the good will of such Seminoles as they 
might meet, because, on account of the war, 
the Indians could not freely secure these 
goods to which they had become accustomed 
and which they needed very much. 

Munro had for some days been secretly 
hoping that Bill might give up the idea of 
going along on the pursuit of Holtess and 
Sokala, and stay with Malota in Tallahas¬ 
see’s camp. The two lads had become fast 
friends. They left camp in the morning and 
never returned before evening. Billy was 
an eager pupil in Seminole woodcraft and 
was learning to be a good archer. In the 
evening they always returned with a mess of 
ducks or fish, and one night they came home 
with a four-foot alligator which they had 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 103 

caught alive and carried home tied to a pole, 
as Joshua’s scouts carried the grapes. 

‘‘ Father, we could have caught a big one, 
a big old bull,” Bill told with a flushed face, 
“ if our rope had been strong enough.” 

But when Munro broached the idea of 
Bill staying in Tallahassee’s camp, he dis¬ 
covered that the two boys had planned some¬ 
thing very different. 

“No, Father, I don’t want to stay here,” 
Bill objected. “You promised that I could 
come along, and I am going. But I wish. 
Father, you would let Malota go with us. 
Tallahassee and his mother say he may go, 
and Malota wants to go very much. He 
knows lots about hunting and Ashing in 
Florida, and he can read tracks and trails 
and he has a horse of his own. Please, 
Father, let him go. You will see. Father, 
he is almost as good a scout as Hanowa.” 

Bill’s request took Munro entirely by sur¬ 
prise and he saw many objections to it, but 
Bill was ready to answer every objection of 
his father. Malota, he urged, would be no 
trouble on the trip. On the contrary, he 
would be of much help. Hanowa and the 


104 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

sergeant could make up one party and 
Malota and Bill could make up another 
party. “You know, Father, three men are 
not a good party,” Bill argued. “ It is al¬ 
ways two and one, no matter what you are 
doing and where you are going. You would 
not want me to go alone anywhere, and you 
would not want me to stay in camp alone. 
If you let Malota join us, you can let us 
stay in camp or let us go after game and 
fish, so we don’t have to go hungry. Malota 
can find deer and turtles and gophers. He 
knows where to find fish and he knows where 
the coontie plant grows, of which the Sem- 
inoles make their flour. You know. Father, 
that you do not like to live just on fish and 
meat, and Malota can stay awake at night 
if he wants to, so he can help us watch at 
night when we are in a dangerous place. 
You know. Father, that I am no good for 
keeping awake nights. Please let him go 
with us. Father. Four men make a much 
better scouting party than three.” 

Bill turned several handsprings, when he 
discovered that Hanowa was more than will¬ 
ing that Tallahassee’s grandson should be a 


THE BOAST OP THE SEMINOLE 105 


member of the party. He pointed out that 
any Seminoles they might meet would be 
less suspicious of a party in which there was 
an Indian boy, and he also thought that it 
would be less trouble to look after two boys 
than to look after one. Two would take 
care of themselves, he believed. 

“ I am not at all sure of that,” Munro 
replied with a laugh. ‘‘We white people 
have a saying that two boys is only half a 
boy and three boys is no boy at all. But 
since you all think it is a good plan and Billy 
and Malota have set their hearts on it, I will 
consent. Let him go along.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


At last the morning arrived on which the 
four travelers said "'Aylip-kashaw/^ good¬ 
bye, to their friends on the Mayakka and 
turned their horses east toward the fording 
place across Peace Creek some twenty miles 
away. 

No soldiers ever entered more light- 
heartedly upon a dangerous campaign than 
did Bill and Malota on the hunt for Holtess 
and Sokala. If Munro had not strictly for¬ 
bidden it, the two lads would have started a 
running race eastward before they were out 
of sight of Tallahassee’s camp. 

“ Did I not tell you,” the sergeant spoke 
to Hanowa, “ that two boys are only half a 
boy? These two scamps will make my hair 
turn gray on this trip. Some day they will 
get lost and then we have to quit hunting 
our men and scour the country for these 
youngsters.” 

‘‘ The white man’s saying is wrong,” re¬ 
plied Hanowa with a smile. ‘‘ They are not 

106 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 107 

half a boy; chass-kee-bin, they are,” and he 
held up the fingers of one hand, “ but to¬ 
night when they are tired they will be only 
two boys,—^maybe only one boy.” 

The two men were not so light-hearted as 
the lads, and after the exchange of opinions 
on the antics of the boys, very little was 
said, because each man was busy with his 
own thoughts. Munro wished that he were 
still a soldier in the ranks. Then, if he had 
been ordered to bring in Holtess and Sokala, 
he would have had no worries and scruples. 
He would have gone and brought them in or 
died in the attempt of it. He would have 
told his son, “ Billy, you stay at Fort 
Brooke. I have to make a long trip on mili¬ 
tary duty.” He would have written to his 
wife and she would have understood and 
found no fault. But now he was respon¬ 
sible both for making the crazy plan and for 
carrying it out. If they should succeed, all 
would be fine, of course; but if their plan 
failed, as it was quite likely to do, Martha 
would probably say: “David, you ought 
to have known better than to chase a 
rogue all over the wilds of Florida. But 


108 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


that is just the way you are. The wilder 
the scheme, the better it suits you. If Billy 
had convinced you that he had lost a marble 
in the Everglades, you would have used a 
month hunting for it. Here you put in the 
better part of a year roaming all over Flor¬ 
ida and running the risk of having yourself 
and Billy killed by snakes and Indians. But 
you would rather roam all over the world 
than come home to look after your farm and 
your family. I don’t see why you left the 
army. I always expected you would plunge 
into some mad adventure, before I should 
ever see you working a day on the farm.” 

Yes, that was about what Martha would 
tell him; and he had almost worried himself 
into a state of anger against his far-away 
wife, when Hanowa roused him from his 
gloomy reverie. 

Elaha/^ his friend suggested, “ the sun 
is high. We have come more than half-way 
to the river. The boys are tired and hungry, 
and are only two boys. Our horses are tired 
and thirsty. We should now take a short 
rest and eat a little food.” 

After eating a piece of dried venison and 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 109 

resting half an hour, the sergeant was more 
cheerful. The sun was shining, a few birds 
were heard twittering, and a gentle wind 
was blowing through the pine tops. Al¬ 
though it was now the latter part of Jan¬ 
uary, men and horses felt as if they were 
traveling on a perfect April day in the 
Northern States. The two boys seemed to 
have lost all desire for mad pranks, and, 
while they kept by themselves, they always 
rode in plain sight of their grown-up com¬ 
panions. 

Of danger, not a trace was seen anywhere. 
The country seemed to be uninhabited. The 
horsemen saw no Indians, nor did they see 
or smell any camp-fires, and they discovered 
no tracks that were not very old. Hanowa 
had indeed taken the precaution not to fol¬ 
low a trail. 

“ Going on a trail is always easier,” he 
observed, ‘‘ but when traveling through the 
pine woods, a horse can go everywhere, ex¬ 
cept in the tangled spots, where a hammock 
is beginning to grow.” 

However, although no signs of danger 
were visible, the company traveled very 


110 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


quietly and each man kept up a sharp look¬ 
out ahead. As it was their intention to camp 
for the night near Peace Creek, they lost no 
time in hunting along the way. Once they 
heard a wild turkey call not far from their 
route, and the two boys were set on going 
after it; but Hanowa insisted that there was 
no time for hunting. 

“We still have a long way to go,” he told 
the boys. “ We wish to camp early as all 
wise men do, and we should do some scout¬ 
ing at the river, before we make camp. And 
remember, boys, that nearly all Seminole 
warriors can make a noise like a turkey or 
a duck or a goose.” 

“ Malota says it was a turkey,” Bill re¬ 
plied. “ Please let us go and get it.” 

“ Turkey or no turkey, you fellows come 
along,” Munro ordered. 

Some time later Malota quickly jumped 
off his horse and pulled something out of a 
hole. “ Gopher! ” he exclaimed with a 
happy smile on his brown face. “ I roast 
him for supper.” 

Malota’s gopher was in reality a land 
turtle, which is to this day quite common on 


THE BOAST OP THE SEMINOLE 111 


sandy soil from North Carolina to Florida. 
The animal is probably called a gopher be¬ 
cause it burrows in the ground like the dif¬ 
ferent kinds of gophers in the Northern 
States. 

Some time later they passed a gopher 
mound with about a dozen holes. Bill 
wished to dismount and also catch a gopher, 
but when his father told him that he would 
have to eat his catch for supper, Bill decided 
that he would be satisfied with a piece of 
Malota’s gopher. 

The sun was scarcely two hours high 
when the party reached the edge of the 
timber on Peace Creek. They deposited 
their packs under a big live oak, staked out 
their horses on an open glade and walked to 
the edge of the river. Here they saw fresh 
tracks of deer, otter, and alligators, but 
they found no tracks of horses or human 
beings. Since the river was too deep for 
wading, Malota and Bill offered to swim 
across. Munro was afraid of alligators, but 
when both Hanowa and Malota assured him 
that the allapataws never molest a man, he 
consented to let the boys swim across. The 


112 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

lads tied their clothes in a bundle on their 
heads and quickly reached the other bank, 
where they hurriedly put on their clothes and 
shoes and quietly disappeared into the tim¬ 
ber. They had been told to scout quietly 
for Indians and Indian signs and be back on 
the river in half an hour, although they had 
no watch to measure the time. 

“ I hope they will not loiter or get lost,” 
remarked Munro, as he and Hanowa quietly 
rested in a grove of tall palms. 

“ Malota would not get lost,” the Sem¬ 
inole observed quietly, “ and they will not 
loiter and play, because the water in the 
river is not warm at this time and the boys 
are hungry.” 

The half-hour, nevertheless, seemed very 
long to Munro, who soon began to feel that 
they should not have allowed the boys to 
act as an advance scouting party. “ They 
might run into a Seminole camp,” he ex¬ 
pressed his fear, “ and be made prisoners or 
even be killed, without our knowing that 
anything had happened to them.” 

“ My brother,” replied Hanowa, “ the 
Seminoles are not that kind of Indians. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 113 


They would not harm unarmed boys. They 
would come with them to our camp.” 

The lads reappeared on the river bank 
almost on the minute. When they had again 
crossed the stream, Bill could not get into 
his clothes quickly enough, for his teeth 
actually chattered with cold. 

“ We did not see a thing,” he reported. 
“ Malota, I beat you to camp! ” And with 
these words, Bill started on a full run as 
soon as he had his shoes on. When the 
other members of the party arrived, he 
already had a fire going and a pail of water 
almost boiling. 

“ Jiminy crickets! I am cold,” he ex¬ 
claimed. “And I am hungry. Oh, I am 
hungry! ” 

“ Take the big ax,” his father told him, 
“ and cut some wood for our camp-fire. 
That will warm you up. It will not be long 
before supper is ready.” 

Fortunately there was plenty of food in 
camp. Munro heated a big panful of veni¬ 
son with a few strips of bacon. He also 
heated a batch of coontie cakes, which one 
of the Seminole women had tied up in palm- 


114 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

leaves, and he made a big kettleful of coffee 
to be sweetened with brown sugar. 

As soon as Munro had called, “ Sup¬ 
per,” Bill was in his place, nor did the Sem- 
inoles have to be called twice. After supper 
the two boys built a camp-fire of fat pine 
logs, whose blaze shone as red as the moon, 
when it rises behind the forest. For a while 
Bill had many questions to ask about the 
near future, but the Indian boy looked in 
silence at the fire without batting an eye. 
“ If they could not ride their horses in the 
Cypress Swamp, what were they going to 
do with them,” he wanted to know. “ If the 
water was deep in the swamp, how could 
they explore it, if they had no canoe.” But 
it was not long before Bill’s head began to 
nod, and the tired lad slipped quietly into 
the tent and crept under the blanket. Owls 
hooted in the timber, an alligator bellowed 
in the river close by, and wolves howled in 
the distance, but Bill heard none of them. 
A storm with thunder and lightning and a 
heavy rain passed over the camp, but Bill 
slept through it all, and did not awake until 
his father called him at sunrise. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Since the indications were for a warm 
day, the travelers decided to push on as 
soon as possible after breakfast, and do no 
traveling in the afternoon. Some half-mile 
up the creek from the place where the hoys 
had swum the stream, they found a place 
where men and horses could wade across. 
Although they had thus far not seen any 
fresh signs of human beings, they jogged 
along with more care and kept up a sharper 
lookout both ahead and on their flanks. 

The character of the country was very 
similar to that of the region over which they 
had come. The open pine woods stretched 
out with sheer endless monotony. Always 
off in the distance the trees seemed to close 
into thickets, similar to the jackpine regions 
of the Xorth, but they never did. However, 
gradually the country took on a more 
Southern aspect. The hammocks of broad¬ 
leaved trees formed denser thickets; they 
contained larger oaks, magnolias and fig 

115 


116 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


trees, a greater abundance of long rope-like 
vines, and more different kinds of air-plants 
grew on the trunks and branches of trees. 
From every tree, except the palms, hung 
long gray festoons of Spanish moss, which 
is in reality not a moss, but a flowering 
plant that bears little fragrant yellow 
flowers and is distantly related to the lilies. 
The only places where one sees in northern 
forests anything like the long beards of 
Spanish moss are little islands in the Great 
Lakes and beaver ponds in dense northern 
forests. In these places one may find, on 
dead limbs of spruces and tamaracks, beards 
of gray lichens; but in winter, when the 
beaver ponds are frozen, the deer pick off 
the tufts of lichens as high as they can reach. 

The air plants which the travelers ob¬ 
served north of the Caloosahatchee were by 
no means limited to the Spanish moss. 
Some were evidently ferns, some bore the 
odd flowers of orchids, and others looked 
like bunched grasses growing on the bark of 
trees. These grass-like plants are known to 
botanists as Tillandsias. These are the 
plants which at the present time one may see 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 117 

as odd-looking tufts on telephone and tele¬ 
graph wires all over Central and Southern 
Florida. 

Early in the afternoon the men pitched 
camp in the shade of a clump of young pines 
near a large hammock. It was now that 
Malota cooked his gopher for dinner. On 
the evening before he had been too hungry 
to wait for it. Having first killed the turtle, 
he roasted it whole and in the shell over a 
gentle fire. He and Hanowa said it was 
very good and ate it without salt, but Bill 
looked rather sober when he ate a few bites 
with a pinch of salt. 

“ Little Brother,’’ remarked Hanowa, 
“ some day, when you are very hungry, you 
will smile when you eat the gopher.” 

Munro had expected to travel over much 
wild, uninhabited country, but he had not 
expected to travel for days without even 
seeing a sign of human beings. According 
to his idea, there were two or three thousand 
Seminoles in Florida at that time. What 
had become of them? Where were they? 
Tallahassee’s camp could hardly be the only 
one in Southern Florida. He began to feel 


118 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

a bit uneasy about this man-hunt. They 
were looking for two fugitives in a country, 
where to all appearances there was nobody 
living. And they were traveling so slowly, 
as if they were afraid that they might catch 
up with somebody. 

In the evening when the boys had gone 
hunting with their bows and arrows, Munro 
told Hanowa of his worries. 

“ Where are all the Indians? ” he asked. 
“ Why don’t we meet some, or at least see 
their trails? ” 

Hanowa seemed surprised at these ques¬ 
tions. “ It may be that we shall see too 
many of them pretty soon,” he answered. 
“We do not need them now. When we 
need them, it may be that we can find them.” 

“ Why don’t we discover any of their 
trails? ” Munro repeated. 

For a minute the Seminole looked at his 
friend in silence, as if he were trying to read 
the white man’s thoughts. “ My brother,” 
he then spoke slowly, “ we are traveling 
toward the river Caloosahatchee and toward 
the Big Cypress Swamp, but we are not 
traveling on the trails of the Seminoles. If 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 119 

a man travels on a trail, he may meet people 
he does not wish to see. We do not wish to 
see Seminoles and we do not wish them to 
see us. That is the reason we travel on no 
trail. The land is big, and if we do not ride 
on a trail, no one will see us for many days. 
That is the way my people travel when they 
do not wish to be seen.” 

“ Your answer is good,” admitted the 
sergeant, ‘‘ but shall we ever overtake the 
men we are hunting, if we do not travel 
more than ten or twelve miles a'day? ” 

‘‘A good hunter,” replied the Seminole, 
“ does not travel fast, when he hunts the 
deer. He goes slow, he makes no noise. 
By and by he gets him. We must give 
plenty of time to our men. They must think 
that nobody is hunting them. Then some 
day, maybe, we shall catch them. If we 
scare them they will run away, or they will 
watch and catch us. And I Imow,” he con¬ 
cluded, ‘‘ that they are not in these piny 
woods. Here the hunting is poor and it is 
not a good country for thieves to hide. It 
is too open.” 

Mimro felt convinced by the Seminole’s 


120 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

talk, but he had another thing that worried 
him. “ I still think,” he began, “ that we 
should have left these lads with your friends. 
They will worry the life out of me. Here 
it is almost dark and' there is neither sound 
nor sight of them. I am afraid they are 
lost.” 

“ They are not lost,” Hanowa asserted 
somewhat curtly. Elaha, you could no 
more lose that boy, Malota, than you could 
lose a wise dog.” 

“ I suppose you are right,” Munro ad¬ 
mitted, “ but I know that they are going to 
eat us poor, into starvation. I never saw 
boys eat the way these two scamps eat. Our 
venison is more than half gone, and they 
would have eaten more if I had given it to 
them.” 

Elaha, we shall not go hungry,” Han¬ 
owa asserted quietly. “We can always 
find coontie roots,” and with a twinkle in 
his dark eyes, he added, “ also gophers and 
young allagataws.” 

“ You need not call me brother,” Munro 
protested, “ if you are planning to feed me 
on gophers and alligators. We old soldiers 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 121 


can live on tough beef, salt pork, and beans, 
but we draw the line on turtles and alligators 
and snakes. Where are those boys? It is 
getting pitch dark and those two scamps are 
still roaming around.” 

And then there came a long low whistle 
on three notes, the prearranged signal for 
any one approaching camp after dark, and 
into the light of the camp-fire marched the 
boys, each triumphantly carrying a big 
turkey. With much pride and enthusiasm 
they told how they had watched a flock of 
turkeys go to roost, and how they had crept 
up to the birds when it was so dark that 
they could just see them against the sky, 
and how each had brought down his bird 
with one shot. 

“ Now, Father,” Bill declared, “ you can¬ 
not say any more that we are going to eat 
you bankrupt. We go turkey-hunting again 
to-morrow evening.” 

And Sergeant Munro felt as proud as 
Billy and Malota. For the time, all his 
worries were forgotten, and he gave each of 
the lads a big piece of venison. 

“We could not come back any sooner,” 


122 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

Bill explained, between bites. “ Malota 
says, if you try to sneak up on them before 
it is quite dark, they will fly away to an¬ 
other perch. We were never far from camp. 
We could have called to you, but Hanowa 
had told us not to holler. Let us camp here, 
Father. This is the most beautiful spot I 
have ever seen.” 

“ I wish your mother could see this 
grove,” the sergeant agreed. “ She never 
loved the Florida scrub and underbrush. 
Here she could walk as in a garden of 
Paradise. Yes, we shall camp here.” 

“ But more than one night,” the lad 
begged. 

As the travelers had eaten nothing since 
breakfast, each man had developed a re¬ 
markable appetite. The sergeant roasted 
the two turkeys the boys had brought in the 
preceding night. Hanowa put up the camps 
and looked after the horses, and the two lads 
furnished the dessert. The dessert was of a 
character of which the famous old Del- 
monico’s of New York need not have been 
ashamed. It looked much like stalks of 
choice bleached celery, and it consisted of the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 123 

white heart-buds of palms. Crisp and ten¬ 
der were the long white buds, without 
stringy fibers, and they had an agreeable 
nutty fiavor. 

Elaha/* remarked Hanowa, “ the two 
boys are two boys when they hunt turkeys 
and climb palm-trees.’' 

The evening was warm, and a peculiar 
sweet odor of myriads of little flowers of the 
Spanish moss pervaded the air, an odor 
which reminded Munro of the fragrant little 
Linneeas in the Hudson Highlands. Along 
the river, frogs, toads, and alligators filled 
the air with a great nocturnal din, and 
among the tree tops countless hylas were 
piping. Spring had come to the Southern 
Forest. 

“ Will the alligators come after us dur¬ 
ing the night? ” asked Bill. 

“ They do not eat boys,” Hanowa told 
him, “ they eat fish. They are making a big 
bellow to call their mates.” 

But when Bill went to bed he took an ax 
with him into the tent. “ Father,” he said, 
“ if an alligator tries to come into our tent, 
I shall split his snout for him.” 


CHAPTER XV 


After the four campers had enjoyed a 
night’s rest, they went to explore the neigh¬ 
borhood of their camp, and again they were 
struck by the singular beauty of their sur¬ 
roundings. 

The Caloosahatchee is a large river, but 
so luxuriant was the growth of live oaks, 
magnolias and'other southern trees that in 
many places they formed a great arch over 
the smooth brown stream, while a veritable 
garden of air plants, Spanish moss, orchids, 
ferns, and Tillandsias covering every branch 
and trunk completed the picture of a trop¬ 
ical forest. 

In the river, fish were jumping and giant 
alligators were lazily drifting here and there 
waiting for a chance to close their terrible 
jaws on some prey. On the trees overhead 
the air was alive with large strange birds. 
Flocks of the pink curlews passed southward 
to their nesting grounds in the mangrove 
swamps, flocks of white pelicans and of 

124 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 125 


long-necked cranes were passing northward, 
while snow-white egrets and herons perched 
among the branches. So numerous ■ were 
these and other large stately birds, that the 
explorers hardly noticed the many smaller 
birds which would have attracted their at¬ 
tention in a northern forest. 

The air was pervaded by a strange fra¬ 
grance and Hanowa pointed to the large 
white flowers of the sweet bay and the great 
magnolia, and said, ‘‘ They make it.” 

“ If we could only stay here a week, or 
a real long time,” was Bill’s wish. 

“And if only your mother could see these 
trees and flowers and birds,” Munro added, 
“ she would wish to live here always and 
never go back north where cold and storms 
are now at their worst, for this is the be¬ 
ginning of February.” 

Bill and Malota were quite set on swim¬ 
ming the river and scouting through the 
timber on its southern bank, but Munro 
would not hear of it. 

“ This time you boys stay with us until 
we are all ready to cross,” he declared. 

“ But, Father, we may run into some 


126 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

hostile Indians,” argued Bill, “ if we do not 
scout ahead.” 

“We might as well run into them now as 
later,” replied Munro. “ You boys do not 
swim the Caloosahatchee. I have seen too 
many alligators. Look at that big brute 
sunning himself in the bend.” 

“ All good alligators,” Malota asserted. 
“ Only eat dogs and pigs.” 

“ Boys, I cannot believe it,” Munro re¬ 
plied. “ I fear there may be a bad one 
among the many good ones; they all look 
bad to me. You boys stay on this side until 
we all cross over.” 

The explorers remained several days in 
this delightful spot, which Bill called Para¬ 
dise Camp, because he could not help think¬ 
ing that the river which issued from the 
Garden of Eden must have resembled the 
Caloosahatchee. His father was ready to 
admit that the river of Paradise might have 
resembled the Caloosahatchee in the trees 
and flowers and birds on its banks, but 
he did not think there were any alligators in 
Paradise. 

“ If there were any, they were good alii- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 127 

gators,” asserted Bill. Malota says they 
are all good now.” 

“ Well, they may be good,” Munro 
granted, “but they do not look it; so you 
fellows find a place to swim where there 
are none of the ugly brutes. You may hunt 
turkeys and deer, and Hanowa says you 
may use your guns.” 

Bill let out a yell at this welcome news, 
and he and Malota started on a real hunt at 
sunrise next morning. Several hours before 
noon they returned to camp laden with 
game. Malota carried a fat young buck, 
while Bill was puffing under a load of four 
turkeys and eight turkey eggs. 

“ Father,” he pleaded, “ let us have fried 
turkey eggs and a little hardtack for dinner. 
I tell you we are hungry; two miles at least 
we carried our game.” 

“Turkey eggs?” queried Munro. “Do 
you hunters guarantee that they are strictly 
fresh? ” 

“ Malota says they are,” Bill declared. 
“ The turkey hen lays ten or twelve eggs 
and there were only nine in this nest. We 
left one egg in the nest.” 


128 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


The eggs proved strictly fresh, and fried 
with a little deer suet, furnished an excellent 
dinner, and since one turkey egg contains 
about as much food as two hen’s eggs, there 
was plenty to eat for everybody. 

“ You hunters must cure your meat,” 
Munro told the boys after dinner. “ Han- 
owa and I have other things to do, and it is 
not more than fair that those who have the 
fun of hunting should cure the meat so it 
will not spoil.” 

Although some of the nights were still 
decidedly cool, the temperature at noon 
often rose to summer heat, especially when 
the day was clear, and most days were clear. 
The hunters therefore decided to salt and 
smoke their venison, and then wrapped it up 
in pieces of cheesecloth to protect it from 
flies. Flies had not yet become numerous, 
but both of the lads knew enough woodcraft 
to realize that it does not take many flies to 
spoil a piece of meat. 

Since the boys expected that two of the 
turkeys would be roasted for supper in the 
evening, and that the other two would be 
used the following day, they did not think 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 129 


it necessary to smoke the turkeys; but they 
rubbed a little salt on the inside of the 
dressed birds, and after partly roasting them 
over a gentle fire, they tied a piece of cheese¬ 
cloth around them and hung them up in a 
cool shady place. 

In the afternoon the boys walked up¬ 
stream about a mile, to a place where the 
current was less sluggish than it was near 
the camp; for the Caloosahatchee and all 
rivers draining the Everglades show rapids 
and run with a swift current only where they 
cross the limestone rim which encloses the 
basin of the Everglades. 

The Caloosahatchee in those days would 
have delighted the heart of every fisherman. 
The lads had no book of fancy flies; they 
had no wobblers and plugs, no minnows, not 
even angleworms, for no man has ever found 
angleworms in a wild country. Each boy 
had a line and a few hooks and when they 
arrived at the fishing place, each cut himself 
a pole as long and as slender as he could 
find. They could have caught frogs for 
bait, but Bill was glad to learn that they 
should not need frogs, for he hated to kill 


130 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


frogs, and he had never been able to put a 
live frog on a hook. 

“ They bite on rags,” Malota had assured 
him, so the Indian boy baited his hook with 
a bit of red cloth, while Bill used a white 
rag. And the fish did bite on the rags. 
They bit so fast that the fishermen threw 
back every fish that was not badly injured, 
for they had orders not to bring home more 
than six or seven fish. But the more they 
thre^v back, the more came to try the rag 
baits. And then something happened which 
gave the fish and one of the fishermen a real 
scare. Bill had just raised a big bass above 
the water when suddenly the monstrous head 
of an alligator shot out of the water. Two 
fearsome jaws closed with a loud clack on 
the wriggling fish, line and pole were torn 
from the hands of Bill, who let out a yell of 
fright and rushed wildly for the timber and 
actually started climbing up the nearest 
palm-tree, as if the alligator were at his 
heels. 

Bill’s performance was too much for 
Malota. When Bill came to his senses, 
Malota was lying on his back, kicking his 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 131 


bare feet up in the air, laughing and laugh¬ 
ing, and between laughs jabbering so fast 
in Seminole and English that Bill could 
only make out a phrase now and then, 
although he knew pretty well what Malota 
was saying. But the laugh was not all on 
Bill, for when the Indian boy arose to take 
up his pole and line, they were gone. It 
was lucky that Bill had an extra piece of 
line in his pocket, or the lads would have 
had to go home without a fish after they had 
thrown more than a dozen back into the 
river. 

» 

Munro and Hanowa had not been idle 
during the day. They had cut a dozen 
palm-trees and by the skilful use of vines 
as ropes, had tied the trees together in a 
raft which had buoyancy enough to hold two 
men. The banks of the Caloosahatchee are 
quite high and consist of loose soil or of a 
whitish marl with many embedded shells, so 
a landing had to be dug out on both banks 
for launching or landing the raft and for 
getting the horses across the deep river in 
safety and without loss of time. 

“ Ohj Father!” exclaimed Bill, when he 


132 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

saw what the men had done, “ why did you 
cut down all these beautiful palms? ” 

“ Boys, we could find no other trees suit¬ 
able for a raft,” Munro explained. “ The 
wood of all the other trees is too heavy to 
float; most of the trees are also too big to 
handle. We saved the heart-buds of the 
palms for salad. I think I shall boil some 
of them with venison and turkey to give us 
a New England dinner, if you will kindly 
imagine the turnips and potatoes.” 

Since only fresh fish are good fish, the 
campers decided to keep their turkeys until 
next day and have fish for supper, with crisp 
white palm cabbage for salad and sweet tea 
for good cheer. 

After supper they ferried all their belong¬ 
ings across the river and pitched their camp 
on the south side, but they left the horses 
grazing on the open glade north of the river, 
where the grass was very good. Travelers 
in the pioneer days nearly always crossed a 
stream before they made camp. If any 
baggage became wet in crossing, it could be 
dried at the camp-fire. There was also the 
danger that a river might rise so much from 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 133 


a heavy rain during the night that it would 
be impossible to cross it in the morning. 
This danger, however, was not present in 
the rivers of Southern Florida. 


CHAPTER XVI 


At the urgent request of the boys, the 
campers spent one day in camp on the south 
side of the Caloosahatchee. Munro and 
Hanowa sauntered in the palm groves, 
watched flocks of birds going north, did a 
little Ashing, amused themselves throwing 
sticks at the big ugly alligators that lay 
sunning themselves on the banks, and in¬ 
haled the fragrance of the magnolia flowers, 
which now dotted the green foliage like 
thousands of white stars. 

The boys roamed and hunted at their own 
sweet will along the edge of the timber and 
southward, but they had been told not to 
himt toward the east, where, within two 
miles of the camp, a much-used ford crossed 
the Caloosahatchee. 

“We shall find plenty Seminoles,” Han¬ 
owa had cautioned them. “ Do not let them 
find you before we are ready.” 

The sun had sunk to the level of the tree 
tops, when the boys returned to camp. The 

134 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 135 

two biggest turkeys were roasting on a 
green pole over a hot fire of live oak coals. 
Munro was squatting on the ground slowly 
turning the spit, as if roasting turkeys were 
his favorite occupation. Hanowa, who had 
put in the day repairing saddles and blan¬ 
kets, was away looking after the horses. 

Bill’s mouth watered when he looked at 
the browning and dripping turkeys. 

“ How soon will they be done? ” he asked. 
‘‘ I am hungry. Father. I think I could eat 
one of them all by myself. We have not 
eaten a bite of real food since breakfast. I 
lost our venison lunch, while we were 
scrambling through the brush of a hammock 
trying to get a shot at a wildcat, because 
Malota wanted the skin of it for a bag. But 
he got away from us, and we had nothing to 
eat but a palm bud.” 

And then the boys told of the bad luck 
they had met hunting. Not far from camp 
they had flushed a turkey hen and had 
spent some time looking for the nest. Fail¬ 
ing to find the nest, they had followed the 
turkey and had soon flushed both the hen 
and a big gobbler, but the birds seemed wild 


136 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

and at once got behind some trees so the 
boys could not get a shot at them. While 
stalking the turkeys, they had come upon a 
fresh deer-track and had followed it until 
the deer had jumped up from his bed in a 
thicket of young pine and saw-palmetto, but 
again they had not been able to get a shot 
at their game. For an hour or longer they 
had slowly stalked the deer, hoping to get 
a fair shot, but much to their disgust, the 
deer had at last taken refuge in a bay, which 
in Florida means a piece of low thick timber 
with water covering the ground. Then the 
hunters had sat down on a log to rest, and 
Malota had whispered to Bill, Deer in 
there. We get him. You go around to 
other side. Sit down on log and watch. I 
am barefoot. I walk in, bark like a dog 
and make a little noise. Deer gets scared 
and runs out. You shoot him. See? ” 

Bill found a good log to sit on, and 
Malota barked like a real dog. The deer 
came out. Bill heard him coming and 
quietly arose from his log and stood behind 
a tree, ready to fire. It all worked to per¬ 
fection, except that Bill never saw the deer. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 137 

because the wary; animal kept carefully 
under cover. 

“ Let him go,” said Malota, when Bill 
told him what had happened. “ He is wild. 
I think Seminoles hunted him. We go get 
the turkeys.” 

“After a long search we found the tur¬ 
keys,” Bill continued his story, “ but they 
were even wilder than the deer. Fifty yards 
ahead of us they arose with a great whirr 
of wings and sailed away over the pine tops 
like a pair of eagles.” 

“ Seminoles hunt them,” Malota spoke in 
disgust. “ We go home. We got bad medi¬ 
cine day for hunting.” 

“ Those turkeys look done, Father,” Bill 
remarked, when he had finished his story. 
“ I could eat one raw. I know that Malota 
is as hungry as I am, although he does not 
say anything.” 

The turkey of the boys was picked clean 
sooner than Munro had believed it possible, 
and the lads also ate what scraps the men 
left of their bird. Munro had never realized 
until the last few days that a man who lives 
exclusively on a meat diet may consume 


138 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


from four to six pounds of meat daily, if he 
is compelled to take vigorous exercise. 

“ Hanowa,” he remarked, when the meal 
was over, “ you were right about these two 
boys. They will take care of themselves; 
we shall not have to worry about them on 
that score, but did you notice their appetites? 
I see us eating alligators, if we ever strike a 
country where game is scarce.” 

“ They are good boys. Young alligator 
is not bad meat.” That was all the Sem¬ 
inole scout replied, as he squatted near the 
fire and with a far-away look gazed at the 
red western sky, against which the crowns 
of distant palms were sharply outlined like 
black feathery tufts. 

The morning star was still shining, when 
' the campers started on their adventurous' 
search for two outlaws that might be hiding 
somewhere in the wilderness of Southern 
Florida, a country at that time known only 
to the Seminoles, to the warriors of Osceola, 
Mickenopah and other chiefs, but unknown 
to white men and to American army officers 
and soldiers. 

Most of the time the company rode in 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 139 

silence. Hanowa took the lead, and al¬ 
though they followed no trail, he kept a 
sharp lookout ahead. They found as yet no 
great difficulty in traveling on horseback, 
but the country became gradually more wet, 
although the rainy season had not yet begun. 
There were more hammocks too dense for 
horsemen; low areas, so-called bays, covered 
with water, had to be avoided. Only once 
did they dismount to ease their horses and 
to let them enjoy a drink. Soon after the 
sun had passed the noon hour and when the 
day was getting oppressively hot, Hanowa 
turned sharply into some tall and dense 
timber. A few rods in he stopped, looked 
sharply into the forest and sniffed the air, 
like a suspicious deer. 

Elaha, do you smell smoke? ” he asked. 

“ I smell nothing but magnolias and other 
flowers,’’ was Munro’s answer. “ I see 
nothing but trees and vines, and more trees 
and vines.” 

“ I see tracks, plenty of them,” Bill volun¬ 
teered. ‘‘ Deer and bear and wolf, and one 
alligator track, but no man-tracks.” 

“ We are on a game trail,” Hanowa in- 


140 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

formed them, “ but we shall soon be in 
camp.” 

Within a few minutes they came suddenly 
to a clearing and halted on the bank of a 
small lake, set like a jewel in a ring of dark, 
dense forest. 

“ Little Lake, I call it,” Hanowa ex¬ 
plained. “ I think, Elaha, you are the first 
white man to see it.” 

The shores of the lake, now called Lake 
Trafford, showed much of the same lux¬ 
uriance of the southern forest, which had 
so impressed the two whites on the Caloosa- 
hatchee. Thousands of magnolia flowers 
fairly dazzled the eye. Columns of palms, 
ancient live oaks with enormous spreading 
boughs, immense fig-trees, which had long 
ago strangled and then supplanted their 
unfortunate host trees, allowed scarcely a 
stray beam of sunlight to reach the ground. 
One tree appeared here for the first time in 
great numbers and large in size,—the weird 
bald cypress. But the old cypress-trees 
looked no longer dead; they were just put¬ 
ting forth fresh green shoots with the little 
narrow leaves, that seem to betray the fact 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 141 

that this tree of the great southern swamps 
is a relative of balsams and spruces, the 
Christmas trees of the North. 

“ Let us have a swim, Malota! ” Bill ex¬ 
claimed, as the sunlit blue water suddenly 
burst into view, but he changed his mind 
when several large alligators rushed from 
their sunning places into the water and a 
dozen small ones of all sizes wriggled after 
them. Bill had to be content with a wash 
among the knees of the cypress-trees, where 
the water was too shallow for the large rep¬ 
tiles, and he wished that some curse might 
fall upon the whole tribe of alligators that 
acted like so many grim signs of Ver- 
hoten on every tempting lake and river. 

The boys begged that they might camp an 
extra day on Little Lake, but Munro told 
them that the time of just camping for fun 
had passed. ‘‘ In May the rainy season will 
begin,” he told the lads. “And we must 
scout over as much country as possible be¬ 
fore the rains pour down on us every day, 
after which, we may travel for hours with¬ 
out finding a dry place large enough to 
camp.” 


142 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“We must travel and scout,” Hanowa 
added. “ But some day, when we find a 
good place, we shall take time to hunt alli¬ 
gators,—^hunt them all day, if you like.” 

So they were all in the saddle again next 
day, and now Hanowa led the way straight 
southwest. They kept a sharp lookout for 
Indians and examined every trail they 
crossed. They saw plenty of game, both 
deer and turkeys and a black bear with two 
cubs, but Hanowa would not allow the lads 
to hunt or even fire at game that they ap¬ 
proached accidentally. 

“ We hunt some other day,” he ordered. 
“ Look for tracks now! ” 

They did look for tracks, until they could 
almost see tracks that were not there. No 
matter how they scrutinized every spot of 
bare ground, they saw no sign of either 
white man or red; but the character of the 
country was changing. They passed over a 
stretch of rough limestone, full of holes, 
which made the footing for the horses so 
dangerous that they had to pick their way 
with the utmost care. 

Hanowa was leaning forward in the sad- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 143 


die. His eyes peered ahead among the pines 
and searched the sky for wreaths of smoke. 
His action reminded Bill of a pointer slowly 
stalking the game up wind. But there was 
neither sight nor smell of smoke, nor sign 
of either red man or white. 

In the afternoon of the second day, after 
they had left the Little Lake, they rode up 
a ridge, which reminded Bill strongly of the 
pine-covered sand dunes of Tampa Bay, 
and from beyond the ridge came a strange 
dull roar. On top of the ridge Hanowa 
stopped, stretched out his right arm toward 
the sun and called, Weva! Big wem! 
We shall soon find a good camp.’’ 

“We are on the sea, the big ocean,” Bill 
called out. “ Father, Malota, hurry up! 
See the big waves. It is the ocean! I don’t 
see an island ahead, nothing but blue water 
all the way to the sky! ” 

There was very little wind, but great 
waves and more waves rolled and rolled in 
from the Gulf, and broke roaring and seeth¬ 
ing on the white sand of the beach. 


CHAPTER XVII 


When the camp-site had been selected in 
a spot not too much exposed to the sea 
breeze, Munro whispered something to 
Hanowa at which the Seminole laughed and 
replied, " Elaha, I will do it. I will do it 
good.” 

The boys wanted to know what Hanowa 
was going to do, but he only laughed more 
and said, “You will see. You will see very 
soon.” 

As was his custom, he went to stake out 
the horses, but he staked out only three and 
came back with one of the ropes wound over 
his left arm. 

“ You boys may now have a swim in the 
ocean,” commanded Munro, “ and Hanowa 
will go with you and see that you do not 
drown and that the sharks do not eat you. 
Take your clothes off, boys, and be ready 
for supper in half an hour.” 

But when Hanowa started to tie a rope 
around each boy’s waist. Bill objected. “ I 

1441 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 145 

don’t want to swim with a horse rope around 
my stomach!” he cried. “Take it off, 
Hanowa.” 

“ Billy, you fellows will swim with the 
rope on or take a sand bath like the chickens. 
I am not going to have you carried out to 
sea by the undertow and eaten by sharks.” 

“ Oh, heavens I ” cried Bill, “ every river 
full of alligators and the ocean full of 
sharks. What luck that there are no lions 
in the woods.” 

“ Oh, but there are lions in the woods,” 
Munro replied, “ at least mountain lions or 
panthers. Hanowa and I saw a big one 
sneak into a hammock, when you boys had 
dropped behind a bit.” 

The swim in the surf furnished enough 
fun and was rough enough to have satisfied 
the most daring boy. Between the push of 
the breakers, the pull of the undertow, and 
the counter-pull of Hanowa’s rope, the boys 
swam and kicked and rolled like giant bull¬ 
frogs. But when Hanowa thought he really 
saw the fins of a big shark just beyond the 
white surf, he pulled his charges in with such 
speed and energy that they were dragged 


146 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

up on the beach like helpless frogs at the 
end of a fisherman’s line. 

When the swimmers had washed the sand 
out of their mouths and ears, supper was 
ready, and it was not necessary to ask the 
boys to fall to. 

“We must not let the boys swim again 
before supper,” remarked Munro, when he 
and Hanowa were talking over plans for the 
future. “ In a day or two we shall have to 
get another deer or depend on fish and small 
game.” 

The two men had expected that the boys 
would soon go to bed after supper, for the 
day’s trip over wet, low ground and over the 
stretch of rough limestone had been very 
tiring. But they had forgotten that some 
boys of the age of Bill and Malota bear a 
close resemblance to a perpetual-motion 
machine during the hours in which they are 
not asleep, and that they are never ready to 
go to bed until they are “ all in,” as the say¬ 
ing runs in schoolboy athletics. 

No sooner had Bill eaten his fill of venison 
than he called out, “ Malota, come on, let 
us gather some shells on the beach.” 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 147 

When it grew dark and the lads had not 
returned, Munro grew uneasy. 

“ They cannot gather shells in the dark,” 
he said. “ I wonder why the scamps do not 
come home.” 

With these words the men arose and 
walked briskly to the top of the ridge. And 
then they saw the boys, running back and 
forth, picking up a shell here, digging for 
one there, as busy as a pair of shore birds 
running up and down the beach in search 
of food. 

“ Come, boys,” Munro called. “ It is 
getting too dark and it is time for you to 
roll in.” 

Bill had his hat filled with shells, all of 
his pockets bulged with shells, and he carried 
a few large ones in his hands. Malota, who 
had no pockets, had a load of shells tied up 
in his neckerchief. 

In the light of the camp-fire the lads dis¬ 
played their find, as if they had just dis¬ 
covered and rifled a hidden treasure of Cap¬ 
tain Kidd. They had pink shells and white 
shells, and shells of all colors,—shells coiled 
and twisted like corkscrews, tiny shells 


148 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

almost too small and delicate to handle, big 
open shells that sang when they held them 
to their ears. 

The lads wished to continue shell-hunting 
in the morning, but were told that more 
serious business needed attention. On his 
scouting trip of some months ago Hanowa 
had learned that there was a camp of Sem- 
inoles located on or near the point of land 
on which is now located the small town of 
Naples. Whether Osceola, Mickenopah, or 
some other chief had ordered this camp to 
be held, or whether a group of Seminole 
warriors had of their own accord chosen to 
occupy this strategic point, he had not 
learned. A camp located here commanded 
the only passage past the Big Cypress 
Swamp southward. In the little bay into 
which runs the Gordon River and another 
stream from the big swamp, a dugout could 
be easily launched and then creeping along 
the west coast in the shelter of countless 
islands, it might reach Key West, or it might 
disappear in the Everglades or the man¬ 
grove swamps of White Water 'Bay. If 
Holtess and Sokala had escaped into this 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 149 

part of the peninsula, the warriors in this 
Seminole camp would know it, provided the 
camp had not been abandoned. 

Could they approach this camp, if it still 
existed, without being practically made 
prisoners, and would the Seminoles give 
them whatever information they might have? 
These were the questions Munro and Han- 
owa had been discussing, while the boy^ had 
been gathering shells. 

If they approached the camp unarmed, 
they placed themselves at the mercy of the 
warriors; if they went armed, they might 
draw the fire of concealed warriors. They 
decided to go armed, but in case they found 
the camp, they would employ a bit of 
strategy to draw the curiosity of the war¬ 
riors rather than their fire. 

They had not gone more than half-way 
down the narrow point of land which is only 
about a mile long, when they saw a wreath 
of smoke rising above the tree-tops near the 
small bay, which bounds the point of land 
on the east. Under cover of trees and 
bushes they approached within easy calling 
distance of the camp. 


150 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“ Here is the place,” Munro whispered. 
“ Everybody march! ” 

Hanowa, carrying his rifle in his left hand 
and waving Captain Belton’s parchment 
with the red, white and blue ribbons over his 
head, stepped into an open space, but the 
other three travelers posted themselves to 
Hanowa’s left, well concealed by trees and 
bushes. Then Hanowa, resting the butt of 
his gun on the ground, began to call in a 
loud slow voice, He-u-wa! He-a-wa! 
He-a-wa! ” which means, “ Come here.” 

Had the camp been one of women and 
children not a soul would have appeared for 
some time, but it was a camp of warriors, 
and before Hanowa had thrice repeated his 
call, his keen senses saw and heard a move¬ 
ment in the brush ahead of him, and he knew 
that several guns were pointed at him. 

Hanowa stood his ground,—he could, in 
fact, hardly do anything else. 

iTTi-po-hitch-caw? Do you hear me? ” 
he called. “Let one man come to hear what 
the big letter has to tell you. My men are 
there,” pointing to his left; “ they have 
good guns, but they are friends.” 



A WARRIOR CAME SLOWLY OUT OF THE WOODS. — Page 151 






t 


» 


/ 


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THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 151 

After a little while a warrior came slowly 
out of the woods. He was barefooted. He 
wore a kind of cotton shirt, which reached 
nearly to his knees. On his belt hung a 
knife and a small bag; a kerchief was tied 
around his neck, and he wore no hat. 
Carrying his gun in his right hand, he 
cautiously approached Hanowa. The bright 
ribbons of the parchment seemed to interest 
him more than the message which he could 
not read. When Hanowa learned that there 
were only five men in the camp, he felt much 
relieved and asked the leader to call his men, 
and he in turn called his friends. There was 
no formal greeting. The Seminoles were all 
much interested in the big letter with the 
bright silk ribbons, and Hanowa told them 
the contents of the letter and let them feel 
the red seal, which he had kept carefully 
intact. 

The Seminoles soon became convinced 
that the four men who had come to them 
with such a remarkable letter, meant no 
treachery and did not mean to capture them 
under a ruse. The presence of Malota and 
his apparent close friendship with the white 


152 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

boy, did much to assure them that these four 
men were not merely the advance scouts of 
a larger party sent to capture them. The 
four travelers on their part also felt quite 
safe in establishing friendly relations with 
the five Seminoles whose number they felt 
no reason to fear. 

As soon as mutual confidence had been 
established, the Seminoles invited their 
visitors to eat, and since the guests had eaten 
but very little breakfast, all of them ate 
heartily of pieces of some kind of boneless 
fish, freshly roasted over the camp-fire. 

When, after the meal, Munro produced 
some tea and brown sugar from his pockets, 
the cheer of sweet tea soon made guests and 
visitors talk like old friends. Since Munro 
felt that Holtess and Sokala were getting a 
very long start of their pursuers, he 
broached the object of his journey without 
delay. Had they seen a white man and a 
Seminole pass near their camp into the 
southern part of the Everglades, or had they 
come upon the trail of the two men or heard 
of them having been seen in that part of 
Florida? 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 153 

To these questions, Tillosee, the man who 
had come out to meet Hanowa, and who 
seemed to be the leader of the small band, 
replied that they had seen no white man 
or red man since they had built their camp 
on the Little Bay. They had often sat for 
hours and looked out over Wehatka, the 
great sea. They had seen the white sails of 
large ships far off on the blue water, but 
they had seen no small boat creep along the 
coast. All of the Seminoles agreed that they 
had seen no canoe and no small boat on the 
sea, but one man told that half a moon ago, 
he had discovered a trail of two bears in the 
brush south of the creek. He had found it 
just before dark. During the night there 
came a wind and a heavy rain and he did not 
try to follow the trail in the morning. 

“ I did not see the marks of the feet on 
the earth,’* he closed his story. ‘‘ I saw the 
grass and the flowers bent to the south. It 
may be that the tracks were made by men. 
I did not think of men. I thought only of 
bears. If the trail was made by men, the 
men were walking; they were not riding on 
horses.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


The information given by one of the 
Seminoles was very disquieting to Munro. 
Was there, after all, not a possibility that 
the two fugitives had escaped into that part 
of Florida entirely unknown to white men, 
and but little visited by the Seminoles? A 
great wilderness enclosed by the Big Cy¬ 
press Swamp on the north, by the Ever¬ 
glades on the east and south, and by the 
ocean with numerous mangrove-skirted 
islands on the west. 

‘‘ Hanowa, I am very uneasy in my 
mind,” Munro confided to his friend at the 
evening camp-fire, when the two boys were 
sound asleep. “ Here we are sitting at the 
gate, so to speak, of a big wild country that 
looks to me as if it were made for runaways 
from justice. It measures, as I figure it out, 
about sixty miles east and west, and thirty 
north and south. It must cover about forty 
townships, as white surveyors measure land. 
It is unknown, uninhabited, and almost un- 

154} 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 155 

visited. If you and I were fugitives, per¬ 
haps we should hide there? ’’ 

ElaJiaj that is the country where I would 
take you,” Hanowa answered calmly. “No 
white man could ever find us.” 

“And it is just the country for Holtess 
and Sokala,” Munro replied. “ If they dis¬ 
covered that they were being followed, they 
could disappear into the Cypress Swamp or 
into the Everglades, or they might escape 
to one of the many islands and hide in the 
mangrove swamps, and we could never catch 
them.” 

“If they knew we were after them, we 
could never catch them,” the Seminole ad¬ 
mitted blandly. 

No more was said. The fire had burned 
low; Munro poured water on the ashes and 
the ends of the glowing poles, and both men 
went to bed, but for Munro there was no 
sleep. He fought and suffered through one 
of those mental agonies, that come to men 
who find a difficult and dangerous venture 
more and more laborious and dangerous as 
they advance. A voice seemed to whisper: 
“ Sergeant, you were a fool to start on this 


156 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

mad adventure. You should have reenlisted 
and forgotten about the money you lost. Or 
you should have quit this forsaken wilder¬ 
ness and joined your wife and children. You 
will never see Holtess and your money 
again. You might as well look for a marble 
lost in a mangrove swamp.” 

At last the weary man fell asleep and did 
not awaken until the sun was shining in the 
tent and the boys and Hanowa were setting 
out the few dishes for breakfast. He felt 
refreshed and buoyant in body and mind; 
the cobwebs and the despair of the night had 
vanished. He ate a hearty breakfast and 
when the meal was finished, he spoke to 
Hanowa. 

“ My friend,” he said, “ we must make 
sure that the fugitives have not passed the 
Seminole camp and we must begin to-day.” 

“ My brother is speaking wisely,” Han¬ 
owa assented. Let us go to the Seminole 
camp.” 

It was agreed that Tawfo, the man who 
had seen the tracks, should go with Munro 
and Hanowa on a reconnaissance trip for 
just a day, to make sure, if possible, 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 157 

whether any humans had passed south of 
the camp. Bill and Malota were to remain 
at the Seminole camp. 

“ You boys may hunt or fish or do any¬ 
thing you like,” Munro instructed them, 
“ but you don’t hunt alligators and you don’t 
go swimming in the bay.” 

Bill tried to beg off from this order, but 
his father would not change it. “ You fel¬ 
lows stay around camp for a day,” he in¬ 
sisted. “You may sleep some more, if you 
do not want to fish or hunt, but you stay in 
camp to-day.” 

The lads felt no need of any more sleep, 
nor did Bill care to fish or hunt. “ There 
are so many fish here,” he grumbled, “ that 
it is no fun to catch them. I tell you what 
we do, Malota. Let us explore a mangrove 
swamp. I have never been in a swamp of 
those trees.” 

Malota was always ready for anything his 
white friend wished to do. So the two lads 
soon were clambering about among the fan¬ 
tastic tangle of roots, which the mangroves 
send into the mud. A mangrove swamp 
looks as if all the trees grew on stilts and on 


158 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

rope-like roots. It looks as if it were the 
special duty of the mangroves to protect the 
low coasts and islands against the waves and * 
to build more land. Of all impenetrable 
jimgles and forests, mangrove swamps are 
perhaps the worst, although a traveler might 
find tangles of the spiny, rope-like Cereus 
of some hammocks even worse. 

Perhaps only boys can enjoy scrambling 
about in a mangrove swamp, where all is 
roots and stilts and ropes and wild tangle,— 
roots growing and dropping from branches 
ten to twenty feet overhead. The lads had 
been warned that there are sometimes bad 
snakes in the swamp, but if there were any, 
the noise of the lads scared them away. 
While Bill found it no longer interesting to 
catch large fish with hook and line, he 
thought it great sport to catch with his hands 
the quick little fishes that live in the shallow 
water among the mangrove roots. But soon 
both lads tired of catching minnows and 
gave all their attention to the really funny 
looking fiddler crabs, whose strange shape 
and comical behavior incite even more to 
laughter than the odd sand crabs, which 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 159 

amuse the visitors at Cape Henry in Vir¬ 
ginia and other sandy beaches. 

The fiddler crab is provided with one large 
and one small claw, and he moves the large 
claw back and forth in a threatening man¬ 
ner suggesting the motions of the arm of a 
violin player. Bill was watching one of the 
creatures digging some food out of a hollow 
in a root and then, with his small claw, 
transferring it with quick motions to his 
mouth. The whole performance looked so 
funny that Bill was convulsed with laugh¬ 
ter. Then all of a sudden Bill’s laughter 
changed to a wild yell of pain. 

“ Did a snake bite you? ” Malota called. 

“ No-o, a fiddler pinched me,” Bill called 
in reply. “ It did not hurt very much, but 
it scared me. I had been teasing him.” 

After that both boys started teasing the 
fiddlers, and each boy tried to outdo the 
other in boldness. The game was for the 
boys to see how close they could point their 
forefingers at the fiddler without getting 
pinched. There were shouts and laughter 
when the boys won and there were louder 
shouts and laughter if a fiddler won. When 


160 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

Malota was pinched, Bill did most of the 
shouting; and when the big pinchers nipped 
Bill, Malota supplied most of the shouts. 
So much noise did the two lads mal^e at their 
frolic that Tillosee came to the edge of the 
swamp to ask if they had been bitten by a 
snake. When he learned the cause of all 
the noise he shook his head, saying some¬ 
thing which Malota interpreted to mean, 
“ Crazy kids! Crazy fool kids.” 

When Munro and his two companions 
returned from their reconnaissance, the ser¬ 
geant was not in the most pleasant frame of 
mind. The three scouts had indeed found 
signs of men, but they had not been able to 
gather any definite information from the 
signs. They had discovered the site of a 
small camp-fire in the shape of fragments of 
coal and burnt sticks on a sandy spot. Han- 
owa and Tawfo were of the opinion that the 
signs were from a month to six weeks old, 
but Munro believed they might be only two 
or three weeks old, and in that case the place 
might have been Holtess’ and Sokala’s 
camp. 

They scouted around the fireplace over a 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 161 

radius of two hundred yards to discover, if 
possible, the sleeping-place of the man or 
men who had built the fire, but they found 
none. If Holtess and Sokala had been here, 
they had built only a small fire to roast some 
game and had then gone on to make camp 
for the night miles away. 

“ It means,” Munro decided gloomily, 
“ we have to take a week or two for scouting 
over that whole region. And we have to 
slush over the whole of.it on foot, for the 
country is too low and wet for horses even 
if we could get the horses into it. There 
would be no sense in our going off to the 
north and leaving our fugitives safely hidden 
south of the Big Cypress Swamp.” 

By this time it was dark, and Tillosee came 
to invite his guests to eat before they re¬ 
turned to their own camp. The meal con¬ 
sisted again of the same kind of meat they 
had eaten in the morning. 

“ What is it? ” asked Munro. “ Have the 
men caught a shark? ” 

“No shark,” Hanowa answered, smiling. 
“ It is alligator, young alligator tail. It was 
very good for breakfast.” 


162 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


4 


As soon as Bill heard the word alligator, 
his face assumed a strange expression and 
he got up to leave, but when everybody 
began to laugh at him, Bill grew a little 
testy. 

“ If you all can eat it, I can, too,” he 
spoke up. “It really tasted good at break¬ 
fast, and I am awfully hungry.” 

When the boys began roasting their meat 
at the end of a stick, Munro noticed that 
each boy had his right forefinger tied up in 
a rag. 

“ What have you scamps been doing? ” he 
asked. “ I thought you were both old 
enough to know how to use a knife.” 

“We did not cut our fingers,” Bill ex¬ 
plained somewhat meekly. “We hunted 
around among the mangroves and the fiddler 
crabs pinched us, but we had lots of fun 
with them.” 

“ Fiddler crabs,” exclaimed Munro, and 
stopped eating and everybody stopped eat¬ 
ing for a while. But when Tillosee told that 
the boys had made so much noise that he had 
thought a cotton-mouth must have bitten 
them, the merriment broke loose again. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 163 

Boys,” remarked Munro when he was 
composed enough to speak, “ I am glad we 
took you fellows along. You are pretty lazy 
in camp, and you are not very much good as 
fishermen, but you do make a circus clown 
look like Jeremiah.” 

And that was the end of the day in the 
Seminole camp on the little Bay of Naples. 


CHAPTER XIX 


Tawfo was a young man, perhaps twenty 
years old. On the reconnaissance trip he 
had confided to Munro that he was “ much 
tired ” of sitting in camp. He wished that 
he could go “ all over,” like Malota and the 
white boy. When after a few days of rest¬ 
ing, hunting and fishing Munro’s party was 
ready to scout the country south of the Big 
Swamp, Tawfo expressed to Hanowa his 
wish that he might be allowed to go along. 
Since Munro had grown quite fond of the 
youth, he readily consented that the lad 
might go, on the condition that he would 
find himself, which means that he would have 
to procure his own food. Tawfo was quite 
willing to accept this condition. He laiew 
the country and had hunted over the whole 
region. If the white man would give him 
some lead and powder for his gun, he prom¬ 
ised that he would also hunt for the white 
man and his boy. He had a gun, which shot 
very straight, but his ammunition was all 
gone. 


164 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 165 

There was one matter which worried 
Munro not a little. What could they do 
with their horses ? They could not take them 
on the contemplated trip, and if they turned 
them loose, they would probably never see 
them again. He knew that Sopa would stay 
near the camp for a day or two, but he could 
not be expected to know that his master 
might be gone two weeks. 

And what could they do with their trade 
goods? The quantity was not large, hut it 
would be a hardship to carry the things 
around with them on their back. However, 
Hanowa offered a solution of these diffi¬ 
culties. 

“ The Seminoles will keep them for us,” 
he proposed. “ They will keep the horses 
and the goods.” 

“ I have no doubt that they will keep 
them for us,” Munro granted, “ but shall we 
ever see them again? We may be gone for 
two weeks.” 

There was a gleam in Hanowa’s black 
eyes and a flush seemed to suffuse his brown 
cheeks. 

Elaha/* he spoke slowly, “ if the Semi- 


166 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

noles promise to keep the horses and the 
goods for us, we shall see them again. The 
Seminoles do not lie and steal like white 
men. If they will not keep the horses and 
the goods for us, they will tell us.” 

Munro felt a bit nettled at this blunt 
reply, but he remembered that the Seminole 
warriors had taken no watches or money 
from the bodies of Major Dade’s command 
and that he had never known a Seminole 
either to lie or steal. 

“ I beg your pardon, Hanowa,” he 
answered. ‘‘ I believe your people are more 
honest than many white men. I shall be 
glad to have you see what Tillosee and his 
son will do for us.” 

Elaha, if you will allow me to make a 
small gift to Tillosee and his men,” Hanowa 
divulged his plan— “ then I shall talk to 
them, when we visit them at the camp-fire 
to-night.” 

In the evening, when the men of both 
camps were seated around the fire, Hanowa 
produced his gifts. To Tillosee he gave a 
knife, to one man a belt, to the third man 
an awl, to the fourth man a piece of green 



THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 167 

cloth, and to Tawfo a fishline and a hook. 
Each man was much pleased with his gift, 
but the man who received the piece of green 
cloth seemed to be the most pleased. 

After the gifts had been distributed, Han- 
owa talked to the men in Seminole, not all 
of which Munro could understand, nor could 
he make out the reply of the men, because 
he was not accustomed to their voices. At 
the conclusion of the talk Hanowa turned to 
Munro and said in English, Elaha, my 
brothers will look after our horses and our 
goods. When we return from our journey 
we shall find our goods and our horses. My 
brothers will take care of them.” 

“ Hanowa, what can the man do with the 
green cloth you gave him? ” asked Bill on 
the way home to their own camp. 

“ He will give it to the mother of a girl 
he likes.” 

“ Why does he not give it to the girl? ” 

“ Because,” Hanowa explained, “ that is 
not the way my people do things.” 

A few days later Munro and Bill with 
their three Seminole companions started on 
the great exploring trip south of the Big 


168 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

Swamp. It was on this trip that Bill 
learned for the first time how hard and 
rough a trip in a wild country may be. So 
disagreeable and various were their experi¬ 
ences that on one occasion, with his face 
bleeding and tears in his eyes, Bill wished 
that he and Malota had remained with the 
Seminoles on the little bay and spent their 
time in fishing, hunting, swimming, and 
picking shells on the beach. 

Things started in badly the first night, or 
rather the first morning. The party had 
been plodding eastward near the southern 
edge of the Cypress Swamp with the weird¬ 
looking trees and their strange knee-roots in 
sight on their left. The ground was wet and 
low everywhere; the great primeval cypress 
forest now garbed in the fresh green of 
spring and draped with myriads of long fes¬ 
toons of Spanish moss, stretched away to 
the north and east as far as the eye could 
reach. When it was time to look for a place 
to camp, the explorers were wading in water 
over their ankles, and there did not seem to 
be a dry spot for miles around. After wad¬ 
ing and splashing eastward for an hour or 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 169 


more, they came upon a small piece of 
gTound almost dry, and decided to camp for 
the night. Munro and Bill set up their small 
tent and the Seminoles hastily built a shelter 
of brush and leaves of saw-palmetto. Both 
parties spread a mass of brush and leaves on 
the ground to keep their blankets dry, and 
made a simple meal of venison and tea. The 
meal and a cheerful fire, as is nearly always 
the case, revived their spirits and they made 
light of their hardships. They were all tired 
after their long march and went to bed early, 
promising themselves a long sound sleep. In 
this fond expectation they were to be disap¬ 
pointed, for an hour or two before sunrise 
a shower came up with a pouring rain and 
with a strong wind that scattered the brush 
and leaves of the Seminoles’ shelter and 
blew down the tent of Munro and Bill in a 
heap over their heads, because the short pegs 
they had carelessly stuck into the sandy soil 
were powerless to hold the tent. Within a 
few minutes everything was soaking wet, 
except a few extra articles of clothing and 
their food, which they had piled up on poles 
and covered with a piece of canvas. There 


170 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

was nothing to do but to sit in the rain and 
wait for daylight. 

Munro tried to pass jokes and tell stories, 
but the jokes fell flat and the stories sounded 
ghastly. The rain kept pouring down and 
the wind roared threateningly through the 
tall cypress trees, while flashes of lightning 
and crashes of thunder added to the utter 
desolation and terror of the scene. Wind 
and rain grew colder, as if the clouds had 
just passed over a northern snowfield. The 
half-naked men and boys shivered with cold 
and ran around in a circle. They tied the 
tent to a few poles, and under this lean-to 
they crouched when they tired of running 
around. 

At last the clouds passed over and the 
sky glowed red in the east. Munro looked 
at his watch. “ It has been raining two 
hours,” he said. 

“ I believe it! ” replied Bill, his teeth chat¬ 
tering with cold. “ It—it has—^has been the 
longest night I—I ever lived through.” 

When the sun rose, the boys were chop¬ 
ping wood and dragging poles to the fire¬ 
place, while Munro and Hanowa were try- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 171 

ing their woodcraft in starting a fire. 
Munro’s tinder had become soaked, but 
Hanowa produced a piece that he always 
carried carefully wrapped up in a piece of 
oiled buckskin. With the aid of fine shav¬ 
ings and splinters of fat wood they did get 
a fire started, and then it was not long before 
they had a blaze to warm their shivering 
bodies and dry their tent and clothing; and 
when Munro had for each man a cup of 
hot coffee with his breakfast, the hardships 
of the night were almost forgotten. Every 
man enjoyed a hearty breakfast while seated 
at the friendly fire, and looked forward to 
the day’s tramp under a sun and sky that 
reminded Munro of a perfect June day iji 
the North. 

The travelers met indeed plenty of hard 
going during the next few days, but not 
again did they have tent and shelter blown 
down over their heads. Munro and Bill set 
up their tent with real stakes driven into the 
ground with an ax, and the Seminoles 
secured their shelter with poles, strings, and 
vines in such a way that an ordinary wind 
would not blow it down. 


172 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

At the end of a week, they had traveled 
some seventy-five miles, but they had seen 
no fresh sign of either white men or Indians. 
On a Saturday evening they discovered a 
Seminole house on a hammock in the region 
where the Cypress Swamp and Everglades 
meet, but the place was deserted and Han- 
owa said it had not been used for a year. 

The explorers spent Sunday at this camp, 
and it was a real never-to-be-forgotten Sun¬ 
day. The day began with a long sleep in 
the morning; then came a hearty breakfast 
eaten at leisure. Between breakfast and a 
late afternoon dinner for which Hanowa had 
brought in two wild turkeys, everybody did 
as he pleased. The Indians slept much of 
the time, and Munro and Bill wrote, with 
pencil on small pieces of paper, letters to 
their New York home,—^letters which they 
might not be able to mail for months. All 
were happy that they did not have to set up 
a camp in the evening, and everybody went 
to bed early in joyful anticipation of another 
long night’s rest. 

On Monday morning all started well 
rested and with buoyant spirits on the home- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 173 

stretch for the Seminole camp of Tillosee on 
the little bay of the west coast. 

The return trip led them along the edge 
of the Everglades, that great shallow basin, 
which might well be called a sea of grass 
and which is one of the unique features of 
Southern Florida. As the water was low, 
the rainy season not having begun, they 
examined a few of the hammocks,—wooded 
islands in the great wilderness of saw-grass, 
looking for recent Seminole and white man’s 
camps. 

They could take no time for hunting and 
their provisions soon became exhausted. It 
M^as now that the whole party had to depend 
on the foraging instincts of Hanowa, Tawfo, 
and Malota. These three natives of the land 
kept them from starving. Once they caught 
a mess of fish in a water-hole on the edge of 
the Everglades, where a white man would 
not have thought of looking for fish. An¬ 
other time they raided a gopher mound; one 
day they made flour of coontie roots, and for 
two days the whole party had to eat roasted 
alligator or go hungry. They all chose to 
eat alligator. 


174 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

One night a rainstorm again passed over 
their camp, but they suffered only the incon¬ 
venience all campers suffer in wet weather, 
because they had learned their lesson in the 
first storm and had always made a well- 
secured camp. 

The most serious accident befell Bill and 
Malota on the last evening out but one. It 
was the one time that Bill loudly expressed 
the wish that he had stayed in Tillosee’s 
camp. While Munro was roasting meat for 
supper, and it was alligator steak for the 
third night. Bill caught sight of a ’possum 
ambling slowly toward a hammock, and took 
after it, blessing his luck, for Bill just could 
not learn to like alligator meat, if he knew 
what it was; but he was very fond of roast 
’possum. When the ’possum became aware 
of his pursuer, he got up an unexpected 
burst of speed and disappeared into the 
tangle of the hammock, with Bill in hot pur¬ 
suit, thinking of nothing else but roast ’pos¬ 
sum for supper. The next moment he 
uttered a piercing scream of pain, and yelled 
at the top of his voice, “ Malota, Malota! 
Come quick. The snakes have got me!” 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 175 

Malota, forgetting his usual caution, 
rushed to his friend’s assistance, and the 
next moment he was yelling “ Snakes ” and 
“ Bloody murder ” in Seminole. 

Munro seized his ax and gun and ran for 
the hammock. In his mind he saw the lads 
in the coils of monster cotton-mouths or rat¬ 
tlesnakes like Laocodn and his sons in Greek 
mythology. Hanowa and Tawfo ran after 
Munro, calling to him to be careful, but 
before they caught up with him, Munro, 
seasoned old soldier that he was, also gave 
vent to piercing cries of pain, followed by 
a torrent of remarks about a couple of fool 
scalawag kids. 

Hanowa and Tawfo, who had approached 
more cautiously, did indeed find all three of 
their friends held fast in the coils of terrible 
snakes, not, however, by the kind that 
Munro had imagined, but by the horrible 
spiny coils of the snake cactus, now known 
to botanists as Cerens 'pentagonus. When 
the two Seminoles came up and saw what 
had happened to their companions, they 
stood and laughed as Munro had never seen 
an Indian laugh. The laughter of their 


176 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

companions did not help the captives to take 
their plight with more good humor, for every; 
motion they made in trying to cut them¬ 
selves free with their hunting-knives, drove 
more of the fearful spines into their flesh. 
When, at last, the captives, with the help 
of Hanowa and Tawfo, were freed and on 
their way back to camp, Munro reproached 
the Seminoles for laughing at him and the 
boys. Hanowa replied, stifling more laugh¬ 
ter, Elaha, we did not laugh at your pain; 
we laughed at the noise and the motions you 
all made.” 

Supper was late that evening, for it took 
the three men a long time to pull the snake 
spines out of their flesh, and many of them 
they had to leave until morning because they 
could not see them by the light of the camp¬ 
fire. Bill’s hands and face looked as if he 
had come off second best in a big fight, and 
the poor lad had to lie straight on his back 
all night, because his legs, thighs, hips, and 
shoulders still contained so many of the hor¬ 
rible spines that he cried aloud with pain 
whenever he tried to turn over on his side. 


CHAPTER XX 


The explorers arrived at Tillosee’s camp 
in the middle of the afternoon, tired and 
hungry; in fact, Munro and Bill were com¬ 
pletely worn out. The boy had not enjoyed 
a restful sleep since he had been caught by 
the spiny snake cactus, and Munro’s sleep 
had been broken by the restlessness and the 
screams of the lad, whose face looked hag¬ 
gard and who uttered a stifled cry of pain 
every time a concealed spine was pressed 
into his flesh. 

Bill took off his clothes and Munro and 
Malota each using two knife-blades, when 
their finger-nails were not delicate enough, 
pulled out as many of the small broken 
spines as they could find. To Munro and 
Malota, and more so to Bill, who gave many 
cries of pain, this operation was a serious 
matter, but to Tillosee and his men the per¬ 
formance looked entirely different. They 
roared and shook with laughter, and talked 
and yelled like white boys at a funny vaude¬ 
ville show. 


177 


178 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“ If I were only bigger/’ cried the exas¬ 
perated Billy, “ I would get up and fight 
them all/’ 

“ Confound them, Hanowa, what is it they 
are saying? ” asked Munro. “ I cannot make 
out their jabbering.” 

They are saying,” Hanowa interpreted, 
‘‘ that Billy yelps like a dog that has the 
porcupine quills pulled out of him.” 

“ They are! Are they? ” the sergeant ex¬ 
claimed, and he dropped his knives and 
turned up his shirt-sleeves. But Hanowa 
stepped between him and the men and told 
the Seminoles to go away. At this request 
the Seminoles laughed some more, but they 
turned their backs on Billy and went away. 

When the doctors had relieved Bill of all 
the spines they could find, they rubbed alli¬ 
gator oil on his skin to relieve the inflamma¬ 
tion and the tension of the skin, and in a 
short time Billy was sound asleep on a 
blanket his father had spread out for him 
under a scrubby pine, where a gentle breeze 
from the Gulf kept him cool and com¬ 
fortable. 

When the sun was sinking into the Gulf, 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 179 

Tillosee sent word that his friends should 
come to a feast, and to the half-starved ex¬ 
plorers no message could have been more 
welcome. The Seminoles, using the horses 
of the explorers, had made a great hunt on 
the preceding day and had brought in a 
good supply of game. There was smoked 
venison and fresh venison and several large 
fish. They roasted venison over the fire and 
Munro fried both venison and fish in his 
frying-pans. And in the hot venison suet 
he baked pancakes of coontie flour, which 
Munro and Billy relished very much after 
they had lived a week on turtles and alli¬ 
gators. 

How long the Seminoles sat around the 
camp-fire, Munro and his son never knew, 
for they bade their friends good-night soon 
after the feast, and Bill did not wake up 
until it was almost noon, for the day was 
cloudy so that the heat of the sun did not 
drive him out of the tent. 

Munro and the three Seminole explorers 
also spent much time sleeping during the 
next few days. Munro and Hanowa in 
talking over the results of their trip came to 


180 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

the conclusion that in one respect the trip 
had been a complete failure. They had dis¬ 
covered neither sign nor clue of the where¬ 
abouts of Holtess and Sokala. In another 
respect the trip had been very successful. 
They felt reasonably sure that the fugitives 
were not hiding south of the Big Cypress 
Swamp,—that they had not entered the 
Everglades from the southwest and that they 
had not gone by sea down the west coast. 

“ But where are they, and where are they 
going? ” asked Munro, as he was sitting at 
the camp-fire with Hanowa, after the boys 
had gone to bed. 

Elahaf^ replied Hanowa slowly, and 
with a far-away look, “ they may be hiding 
in the northern part of the Big Swamp. 
They may be in the Everglades, or they may 
be on one of the islands in the big Lake 
Okeechobee; or they may have crossed the 
Everglades and are now going to the north.” 

“ My brother,” Munro replied with a 
touch of impatience, ‘‘ you might as well tell 
me that they are probably somewhere in 
Florida, and be done with it.” 

Elaha/^ the Seminole came back, “ I 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 181 

have told you the truth. If you want to hear 
lies, ask a white man.” 

Munro passed over the rebuke. “ What 
route do you think they will take going 
north, and what place will they try to 
reach? ” 

“ I think,” Hanowa replied, “ that they 
will travel northward after they have crossed 
the Everglades. After they strike the river 
Hilaka, called St. Johns by white men, they 
will buy or steal a canoe and travel on the 
river. Then the white man will try to go on 
a ship at St. Augustine or at the mouth of 
the river Hilaka/^ 

“ What makes you think that they would 
travel that way? ” 

“ That is the way I would go, if I were 
trying to run away to the white man’s coun¬ 
try,” replied Hanowa. “And if I had stolen 
a bagful of money I would not run very fast. 
I would hide for several moons in the Big 
Swamp, in the Everglades and in other 
places. If I were a white man, I would 
shave off my beard; I would let the sun 
brown my face and I should wear the dress 
of a Seminole. Then when I thought the 


182 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

soldiers had forgotten about the bag they 
lost, I would burn my Seminole dress and 
put on the white man’s dress and find a ship 
to take me to one of the big cities of the 
white men.” 

‘‘ My brother,” commented Munro, “ you 
have spoken well. But I almost fear that 
some day you will turn crook.” 

“ What is a crook? ” Hanowa asked. 

“ It is a bad man,” the sergeant explained. 

‘‘ Many white men are crooks,” Hanowa 
remarked dryly, “ but not many Seminoles. 
One Seminole chief was a crook, but Osceola 
killed him ten moons ago.” 

The stay near Tillosee’s camp lasted much 
longer than Munro had intended. Bill was 
quite sick for a whole week, and his father 
was glad that the sick lad could rest in a 
comfortable camp, where, during the hot 
hours of the day, a cool breeze blew from 
the sea. 

After Bill had fully recovered, a week 
more was spent in hunting and smoking 
venison, because Munro and Bill could not 
look forward with pleasure to a diet of 
gophers and alligator. On this hunting trip 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 183 

they also secured a young bear, which made 
a most welcome addition to their supplies. 

On the evening before their departure, 
Mimro made a feast to both camps. There 
were three courses of meat: venison, bear, 
and turkey, but the Seminoles enjoyed most 
the liberal drinks of sweet black coffee. This 
coffee might not have been pronounced very 
good by Billy’s mother, for Munro had kept 
the kettle boiling for some time to give his 
black drink the required strength. His sup¬ 
ply of coffee was running low and he knew 
that the taste of his guests in regard to coffee 
was not at all fastidious. 

Munro made a speech, and Tillosee made 
a speech. Munro’s party were sorry to 
leave, and Tillosee’s men were sorry to see 
their friends go. 

The happiest man was Tawfo, for it had 
been agreed that he was to accompany the 
departing guests. How far he was to go 
with them and how long he was to remain 
with them were matters of uncertainty, for 
the plans of Munro and Hanowa were once 
more much in debate. That Holtess, if he 
were still alive and had not, after all, escaped 


184 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

to Cuba, would attempt to leave Florida at 
St. Augustine or at the mouth of the St. 
Johns River, seemed quite probable to 
Munro, but on the best plan of securing in¬ 
formation about him and intercepting him, 
he was at sea, as he phrased it, but he was 
getting very impatient to be over on the east 
side within reach of the Florida East Coast, 
for which Holtess must be heading. 

I feel that we should either procure a 
canoe and cross the Everglades,” he had told 
Hanowa, “ or we should keep our horses and 
head straight northeast for Lake Kissimmee 
and the headwaters of the St. Johns River.” 

Hanowa had not directly refused assent 
to either plan, but he thought there might be 
too many Indians on the Kissimmee River 
and in the lake country to the north, and he 
said it would be very hard work to cross the 
Everglades. 

“At any rate, let us make a definite plan,” 
Munro urged, “ and do something. This is 
the month of May, summer is here, the rainy 
season has begun and there should be plenty 
of water in the Everglades.” 

“ Maybe we shall soon find out about the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 185 


white man and Sokala and do something,” 
was all he could get out of Hanowa. 

“ Hang all the Indians! ” Munro voiced 
his impatience to Billy, when the two were 
taking a last look at the beach and the blue 
waves of the Gulf. “ It is always ' maybe ’ 
with them. ‘ Maybe so, maybe soon.’ I do 
not believe there is an Indian living to whom 
time means anything. I almost wish, Billy, 
that you and I had gone into this game by 
ourselves. We could not have accomplished 
any less, or know less than we know now.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


Munro^s temper improved somewhat, 
when at last four horses and their riders were 
facing northeast, but before they were a mile 
from camp something occurred which again 
ruffled the old sergeant. Tawfo, who had 
no horse, had slipped up behind Malota. As 
soon as Munro became aware of this, he 
stopped and ordered one of them to get off. 

“ That’s another bit of devilishness of In¬ 
dian character,” he growled to Bill, as he 
and the lad were heading the party. ‘‘ They 
don’t know what it means to be merciful to 
an animal. We can take turns walking, but 
I will not have two men ride one of these 
skinny horses.” 

The horses were poor, not, however, on 
account of maltreatment on the part of 
Tillosee’s men, but because the scrub near 
their camp furnished very poor pickings for 
horses. 

After several days of slow travel, the 
party once more made camp on the south 

186 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 187 

bank of the Caloosahatchee. It was at this 
camp that Hanowa, who had said but little 
during the last few days, revealed a definite 
plan of action to his white friend. 

Elaha/^ he spoke slowly, “ to-morrow at 
sunrise, Tawfo and I go on a long journey. 
We go east toward the small lake Hicpochee 
and the large lake Okeechobee. I think we 
shall find a Seminole camp. We may be 
gone five days or six or more, but we shall 
come back, if the Great Spirit allows us to 
live; and then I shall tell you where we 
should go and what we should do.” 

“ Do not fire your guns in the camp, and 
do not hunt north of the river,” were the 
parting words of Hanowa, when he and 
Tawfo left the camp on foot at sunrise. 

For the first few days of Hanowa’s ab¬ 
sence, the boys were content to remain near 
camp. They caught as many fish as the 
camp could use and they even smoked a few, 
and they amused themselves by throwing 
sticks and shells at big alligators and catch¬ 
ing small alligators with their hands. They 
even paid some attention to the flowers of 
the region, of which many kinds were now 


188 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


in bloom. They made a bet with Munro that 
they could show him a flower, or perhaps it 
was a tree, which was growing over a foot 
a day. When Munro was incredulous, the 
boys took him to a patch of sandy soil where 
they set a stake near a plant which Munro 
recognized as an agave, also called Spanish 
bayonette, of which several species are quite 
common on sandy soil in Florida. Munro 
lost his bet, for when he and the boys visited 
the agave the next evening the central stalk 
of the plant had grown two feet in twenty- 
four hours. Close by stood a dead agave, 
one that had bloomed last year, which was 
forty feet high. 

On a Friday morning the boys begged 
Munro to allow them to go on a hunting trip 
after deer and turkeys. 

“ Don’t be worried. Father,” Bill said, as 
they left, ‘‘ if we are not back before dark. 
We shall not get lost.” 

That hunting trip came very near earning 
a good switching for Bill, and caused, for 
Munro, the worst night of the whole trip. 
It grew dark and midnight came, but no 
boys had returned. The night was pitch 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 189 

dark, and because the wind was south, 
Munro was afraid to fire his gun. So he 
sat in the dark and was tortured by all the 
possible horrors of the wilderness. Indians 
might have captured the lads. A bear, a 
panther, a rattlesnake, or cotton-mouth 
snake or an alligator might have killed one 
or both of the boys, or one of them might 
have broken a leg. 

Just before daybreak Malota came in. 

“ Where is Bill? ” he asked. 

“Where is Bill?” Munro repeated with 
his heart in his mouth. “ He has not come 
in. Where did you leave him? ” 

“ He left me to run and shoot turkey and 
told me to wait for him,” Malota explained 
in Seminole and broken English. “ I wait 
long time. I think Bill go home.” 

“ Why did I ever let you two fellows 
go? ” Munro upbraided himself, while he 
was getting ready to go in search of the lost 
boy. “ I should have known that you two 
fool kids would get us all into trouble. Go 
and get my horse and Sopa. We are going 
to find him. And a real licking I’ll give 
him, if I find him alive.” 


190 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

Just as Munro was tightening the saddle 
girth, Bill walked into camp. He not only 
looked scared and tired; his face and his 
hands were scratched and bruised and cov¬ 
ered with blood. Munro forgot about the 
promised whipping, for Bill looked as if he 
had been punished enough. 

He dropped exhausted at the fireplace. 
“Why didn’t you shoot? You big dum¬ 
my ! ” he asked Malota. 

“ I had no shoots. You had all shoots,” 
Malota defended himself. 

“Billy, Billy! You are the dummy!” 
Munro came in. “ Now tell us what hap¬ 
pened.” 

“ I ran after a turkey,” Bill related, “ and 
told Malota to wait for me. I hit the turkey, 
but he flew a long way and I saw him drop 
into a hammock and went in after him. I 
looked for him a long time, but could not 
find him. I had set my gun against a tree, 
and when I went to get it and go back to 
Malota I could not find it. It had grown 
dark very fast, and I could not tell which 
way to go. I called Malota many times, but 
he did not answer. I was afraid I might 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 191 

walk into another snake cactus, if I kept 
walking around and I did not know which 
way to go to camp. So I lay down under a 
tree to sleep, but I could not sleep well be¬ 
cause I was cold without a blanket. 

“After a while I heard some large animal 
stalk in the brush. It walked kind of softly 
like a big cat, and I could hear that it was 
coming nearer. I had only my knife,—no 
gun and no pistol. I felt my hair rising on 
my head. I was afraid to holler, and the cat 
was coming a little nearer all the time. 

“ I did not know what else to do, so I 
climbed the tree and found a good branch 
on which to sit down. Several times I heard 
the cat prowl in the brush, and then I did 
not hear it for a long time. And then I 
guess I must have fallen asleep, for the next 
thing I knew I was tumbling out of that 
tree. I guess I let out some awful yells, 
because I thought the panther was waiting 
for me and would jump right in to eat me 
up. I climbed back in the tree as quick as 
I could, and then crawled away out on a big 
branch, for I thought the panther was after 
me. I waited a long time for him and was 


192 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


ready to jump to the ground and run for the 
thick brush if I heard him climbing up. But 
he was gone and I never heard him again. 
Pretty soon there was a little daylight and I 
found my gun and came home. 

“ I guess I’ll eat some breakfast now and 
then I’ll take a nap.” 

“You may have some breakfast and you 
may take a nap, Billy,” Munro told him. 
“ But hereafter you two scamps come back 
to camp before dark.” 

The fifth and the sixth day passed without 
a sign of Hanowa and Tawfo. When the 
seventh day also waned without the return 
of the two scouts, Munro became very 
anxious, although he tried to conceal his 
fears from the boys. The lads had caught 
a mess of fine bass for supper, hut Munro 
had no appetite, and his thoughts wandered 
far away to the big lake Okeechobee and to 
his family in New York State. 

“ There they are! ” cried Bill, and the two 
lads dropped their fish and ran to meet the 
scouts, whose faces the sergeant tried to read 
for good or bad news. 

The men were tired and hungry and 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 193 

Munro was kept busy frying and baking 
fish. 

“ My life! ” remarked Bill, “ a hungry 
Indian can eat a lot more than I ever ate at 
one meal.’’ 

At this remark Hanowa smiled and said, 
“ Little Brother, we have not tasted food 
since the sun went down last night.” 

At last the hungry scouts had eaten 
enough, and Hanowa began to tell his 
friends the news. 

“We found a large Seminole camp,” he 
related. “ On a hammock in the Cypress 
Swamp we found it. The war is getting 
worse. Some soldiers have been killed and 
some Indians. The white general wants to 
send the Seminoles away on ships to 
Arkansas, but the Indians do not wish to 
go and they do not wish to give up the black 
men, who have long lived among them. 
Very soon the Indians will come to the 
country where we have scouted, and they will 
hide in the hammocks in the Everglades far 
to the south, where the soldiers cannot fol¬ 
low them.” 

“ Have you seen Holtess? ” asked Munro. 


194 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“ I have not seen him,” Hanowa began to 
tell, “ but the Indians found him and Sokala 
in the Cypress Swamp. They held a coun¬ 
cil and decided to kill the white man in the 
morning.” 

‘‘ Did they do it? ” Bill snapped out wild¬ 
eyed. 

“ They did not kill him. During the night 
the white man stole a canoe from the In¬ 
dians, and he and Sokala pushed into the 
Everglades to the south, where there are 
many hammocks in which they can hide. 
The Indians could not follow, because they 
had no other canoe, but they found a large 
yellow dollar on the place where the white 
man had camped. Now I have told you.” 

‘‘We must follow Holtess and catch him, 
now that we know he stole the money and 
know where he has gone,” Munro gave as his 
opinion. 

“We cannot follow him,” Hanowa re¬ 
plied firmly. “ The saw-grass is too thick 
and too tall in this part of the Everglades. 
The Indians seldom cross the Everglades in 
the north near Lake Okeechobee.” 

“ Then we must travel on horseback to 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 195 

Lake Kissimmee and the headwaters of the 
St. Johns River,” argued Munro^ “ to head 
them oflp, if they ever come that way.” 

Elaha^ I cannot take you and the Little 
Brother to that country,” Hanowa replied. 
“Too many Indians are there. I could not 
talk to all of them. Some of them would kill 
you and they would kill Billy, because you 
are white men with whom they are at war.” 

“ Then we are stalled,—just plumb 
stalled,” the sergeant admitted gloomily. 

“ What is ‘ plumb stalled ’ ? ” asked Han¬ 
owa. 

“ It means we are stuck. We are here, 
» ^ 

but we cannot go anywhere and we can do 
nothing,” explained Munro. 

“ Elaha/’ the scout replied with a twinkle 
in his eyes, “ we are not plumb and stuck. 
To-morrow we travel toward the morning 
sun. On the river Caloosahatchee, a little 
way above the place where it begins to tum¬ 
ble and sing over the rocks, we shall find a 
canoe. We paddle it up-stream to the lake 
Hicpochee, and then we pole it through the 
saw-grass and the lilies and the lettuce into 
the big lake Okeechobee. I have finished.” 


196 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“ Hurrah! ’’ cried BiU while he began to 
turn handsprings and somersaults, “ we are 
going to paddle a canoe. Malota and I can 
go swimming every day, and we shall go fish¬ 
ing for a big alligator.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


The camp near which Bill had fallen out 
of a tree was located about two miles below 
the rapids of the Caloosahatchee near Fort 
Thompson. This fort was built in 1854. At 
the time of our story, no white men were liv¬ 
ing on the Caloosahatchee. Hanowa had 
established the camp some distance below 
the rapids because the Seminoles used to 
cross the river near the rapids. Florida 
rivers generally run with a slow even cur¬ 
rent, but all the streams draining the Ever¬ 
glades run with a stretch of rapids over the 
limestone rim which encloses the great shal¬ 
low basin of the Everglades. Almost any¬ 
where in the Everglades the canoeist can 
thrust his pole or paddle through a few feet 
of muck and strike the limestone bottom. 
Any drainage of the Everglades is apt to 
make stretches of dry muck which is almost 
sure to catch fire and leave nothing but a 
desolation of bare rock. 

All the members of the party, including 

197 


198 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

Tawfo, traveled one day and made camp on 
the edge of the saw-grass which encircles 
Lake Hicpochee. 

“ My friends,” spoke Hanowa, when men 
and boys were seated around the camp-fire, 
‘‘ to-day we have traveled with our horses 
for the last time. To-morrow Tawfo must 
start with the horses for Tallahassee’s camp. 
He will travel straight through the piny 
woods and the saw-palmettoes. He will 
avoid the trails, for if he met any Seminole 
warriors they would make him give up the 
horses. Bill gives his horse to Tawfo; Elaha 
gives his horse to Tallahassee, who is getting 
too old to travel on foot. Malota’s horse he 
will also give to Tallahassee and the old chief 
has promised that he will keep Sopa for me 
until the Great Spirit allows me to return 
to that part of my country, and if I do not 
return, Sopa belongs to Tallahassee.” 

There were tears in Munro’s eyes when 
he bade Tawfo farewell, but Bill hid in a 
thicket and cried, for he had become much 
attached to Tawfo and to all the horses that 
had been such faithful servants of the trav¬ 
elers. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 199 

When Tawfo and the horses had passed 
out of sight, each of the four men packed 
his bundle and TIanowa led the way through 
the saw-grass to the west end of Lake Hic- 
pochee. The distance was scarcely a mile, 
but it took them over an hour to reach the 
lake, where they found a long dugout canoe 
lying bottom up, on the roots of several 
large cypress trees. 

“ Whose is it? ” asked Bill. 

‘‘ It is ours, Little Brother,” replied Han- 
owa. “ I bought it of an Indian. Three 
fish-hooks, a knife, a handful of beads, three 
silver dollars, a cupful of powder I gave for 
it. The Indian had no powder to shoot 
game. It is a good canoe, and it would have 
taken us a week to make one out of a cypress 
log.” 

Under the canoe lay two long push-poles. 
To the lower end of each pole was fastened 
an iron triangle. The poles were of the same 
construction as those used at the present 
time by duck hunters on shallow, reedy lakes 
in Minnesota, and they are also still in use 
to this day by the Seminoles in the Ever¬ 
glades. 


200 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“ But where are the paddles? ’’ asked Bill. 
‘‘ Somebody must have stolen them.” 

Hanowa gave Bill a reproving look. 

Little Brother,” he spoke quietly, ‘‘ the 
Seminoles do not steal, and there has never 
been a white man on this lake. This canoe 
was made for traveling in the Everglades, 
and paddles are useless in the saw-grass. 
We must now make paddles. Three long 
paddles we must make, and two short ones 
for you and Malota.” 

Within a few hours, five paddles of dry 
cypress wood had been rough-hewn with' 
axes and whittled down with sharp hunting- 
knives. When the travelers began to launch 
their ship, they discovered that a dugout 
canoe, even if made out of cypress wood, is 
a heavy craft. Lake Hicpochee, which is a 
shallow lake scarcely a mile long, was just 
the right body of water for the canoeists to 
get the feel of their craft and their paddles. 
Once Hanowa steered the canoe around the 
lake, as if he were looking for the lost open¬ 
ing into the saw-grass. On the second trip 
around he discarded the paddle, and pole 
in hand, stood on the stern overhang and 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 201 

pushed the canoe into a shallow lane that led 
into the saw-grass from the northeast. 
Munro stood up in the bow and did his best 
with the other push pole, while the boys did 
their utmost, each pushing with a long pad¬ 
dle. Every man’s hands were found by the 
terrible teeth of the saw-grass, but they kept 
moving, for Hanowa had told them that 
they were only two or three miles from 
Okeechobee. After two hours of hard work 
they emerged from the saw-grass. The vast 
expanse of Okeechobee was spread out be¬ 
fore their eyes, and white men and red men 
gave shouts of delight. To their right they 
could plainly see a low wooded island, now 
known as Observation Island. Toward the 
north, their eyes could follow the saw-grass 
shore line until it disappeared in a blue haze, 
but toward the east and northeast the lake 
seemed endless like the ocean with long lines 
of glittering white-caps running before a 
westerly wind. 

But the hard work was not yet all over. 
It took them fully another hour of pushing, 
pulling, and wading, through tangles of 
water-lilies, careless-weeds, and water-let- 


202 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

tuce, before the heavy dugout floated on the 
open water of Okeechobee. 

The canoe was some twenty feet long over 
all. It was narrow for its length and cut 
sharp at the water line of the bow. It was 
narrowed at the stern and finished with an 
overhang, on which the helmsman stood 
when poling through the saw-grass and on 
which he was seated when he used the pad¬ 
dle in open water. 

‘‘ We go not far from the saw-grass,” said 
Hanowa, “ where the wind cannot strike us. 
You all sit still and paddle. Pretty soon you 
are not afraid.” 

Munro and Bill were quite willing to sit 
still, for they had the feeling that their ship 
was better adapted for pushing its nose 
through the saw-grass than for traveling 
over wide stretches of open water, where 
wind and waves had a full sweep. 

Before long, however, the four navigators 
felt more confident and they fell into an even 
stroke by which they made good progress. 
When after two hours of paddling they 
came to the mouth of Fish-eating Creek, 
Hanowa suggested that they push up the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 203 

creek a little way and try to find a camping- 
place. 

“ If we go on,” he continued, “ we may 
not be able to find a place where we can 
land when it gets dark.” 

To a canoeist accustomed to camp on the 
lakes and streams of the Northern States 
and Canada, this first night’s camp on Lake 
Okeechobee would have seemed a miserable 
place. The ground consisted of soft muck 
scarcely a few feet above the water. No 
trees shaded the place, but the campers had 
to clear the ground of the scrubby growth 
of papaw and elder, so that they could put 
up their shelters and build a fire. 

Next morning, Hanowa called his friends 
an hour before sunrise, telling them that 
they had to pass a long stretch of shore 
where it would be difficult to find a good 
camping-place. “ The lake is quiet,” he 
added, “ and we wish to pass this part of 
the big water as fast as we can.” 

About the noon hour, they pushed the 
canoe into the saw-grass so that they might 
rest a while and eat a little lunch. They 
drank the water of the lake, which was not 


204 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


at all bad in taste, although it was brown 
in color and quite warm. Both in taste and 
color the water of Okeechobee resembled the 
water of Lake Drummond in the Great 
Dismal Swamp of Virginia. 

When evening was approaching, Munro 
and Bill began to be worried about a place 
to camp, for they had not seen one good 
and accessible camp-site all day. An hour 
before sunset, Hanowa solved the problem 
for them by pushing the canoe into the saw- 
grass and saying, “ To-night we sleep in the 
boat. I think we are not far from the place 
where the water from the river Kissimmee 
runs into the lake, but it is often difficult to 
find the place because the water comes 
through the saw-grass. We do not wish to 
camp near that place because we might meet 
many Indians traveling south away from 
the country where the soldiers are.” 

Munro built a small fire of driftwood and 
dead stalks of saw-grass on floating muck, 
and in that way made a kettleful of tea, 
which every one enjoyed very much after the 
long and strenuous day. 

After supper Hanowa mixed in a frying- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 205 

pan some suet of a deer and a mass of pow¬ 
dered charcoal, and melted and stirred the 
mixture over the fire. 

“ What is that for? ” asked Bill. 

“ It is black paint,” explained Hanowa, 
“ and if to-morrow or next day I tell you to 
use it, you must use it as I tell you. You 
must do as Malota does, when I tell him to 
do something, and you must not ask this, 
and that, and something else.” 

This information was not at all satisfying 
to Bill, but realizing that Hanowa did not 
wish to tell any more, he kept stiU. 

After most of the goods and utensils had 
been deposited on a pile of cut saw-grass 
each man arranged his bed. Hanowa lay 
down with his head next the stern, while 
Munro’s head rested close up against the 
bow. Bill rolled up a coat for a pillow next 
to his father’s feet, and Malota’s head rested 
next to Hanowa’s feet. The night was 
warm, so each man folded a blanket under 
him and rolled himself into another. 

“ Oh, this is not half bad,” Bill admitted, 
when he had stretched out. “ I never 
thought this old dugout was big enough for 


206 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

all of us to sleep in. If Malota does not 
start kicking me, I shall sleep all right. 

‘‘ But what are we going to do if it 
rains? ’’ 

“ If it rains,” Hanowa replied dryly, “ we 
shall all get wet. When it stops raining we 
shall wring the water out of our blankets 
and dip it out of our canoe. Then we shall 
paddle away and let the sun make us and 
our blankets dry again.” 

“ Wouldn’t that be an awful mess? ” Bill 
replied. 

“ It would be a mess, Billy,” his father 
agreed. “ But now you had better keep still 
and go to sleep.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


How close the sleepers in the dugout 
came to having the mess of soaked blankets 
and enough water in the boat for wading, 
Bill learned next day. Before midnight a 
heavy shower with much thunder and 
lightning passed over the lake south of 
them, but neither Bill nor Malota awoke 
until Hanowa called them at dawn of day. 

“ We must be ready to travel now,” he 
told his friends, “ and eat our breakfast in 
the boat. Yesterday, just before it grew 
dark, I saw smoke north of us. That means 
some Indians are coming down the Kis¬ 
simmee, and we do not wish to meet them if 
we can help it.” 

From time to time Hanowa stood up in 
the bottom of the stern to look and listen. 
They might have been traveling an hour 
and the sun was just rising over the brush 
and timber now barely visible on the eastern 
shore, when Hanowa sat down quickly and 
whispered, “ Indians! White men, put on 

207 


208 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

black paint! Rub it all over face and hair, 
and over hands and arms. Do it quick, 
Billy, and make no talk. 

“ If the Indians see white men in our 
canoe they will come and ask many ques¬ 
tions, and maybe they will want to kill you, 
because some of their men were killed in the 
battles with the soldiers. If they see black 
men, they will not care, because black men 
have lived with the Seminoles for many 
years. Some of the black men are the slaves 
of the Indians, but many of them are free 
men and the Indians treat them as friends.” 

By this time Hanowa had headed the 
canoe for the open lake, as if he were going 
straight to the sandy beach on the northeast 
shore of the lake. It was not long before 
seven canoes pushed out of the saw-grass. 
As soon as the occupants saw Hanowa’s 
canoe, they called and motioned to him to 
come nearer, but Hanowa stood up in the 
stern and told them that he was going to the 
next river to catch fish and otters. 

“ Black men, you keep paddling slowly,” 
he remarked in a low voice. “ Malota, you 
take in your paddle and sit still.” 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 209 


Then he told the Indians that the lake was 
getting rough, which was true. He was 
afraid, he added, his canoe would become 
wind-bound, if he stopped to visit. 

Although the canoes were all heavily 
loaded with women and children, two young 
men, who were managing the first canoe, 
started to follow Hanowa, but a woman in 
the canoe scolded them sharply, saying, 
“Turn back, you young fools! You will 
drown us all! ” and the two young men gave 
up following Hanowa. 

Glad indeed were Munro and Bill to see 
the distance between their canoe and those 
of the Indians steadily increase. However, 
a new fear soon took possession of them. 
Wind and waves were increasing apace, and 
the travelers were now so far out on the 
open lake that they had no longer a choice 
of routes. The west, east, and north shores 
were about equally distant. Moreover, to 
travel east or west with the waves broadside 
on would have been exceedingly dangerous 
with the long narrow dugout. So they all 
plied their paddles with energy and the two 
white men kept longing eyes on a stand of 


210 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

bald cypress straight ahead and wondered 
how far they were away and how long it 
would take to reach them. For some time 
the spray of the waves had dashed over the 
stern, but wind and waves seemed to grow 
in violence from one minute to another and 
splashes of water now began to slop over 
the stern. 

“Billy, sit on the bottom,” commanded 
the steersman. “ Keep hands off sides and 
sit still. Malota, you kneel on the bottom 
and bail.” 

For some time Malota kept the water 
down, while Hanowa and Munro fairly 
made the craft fly before the wind, while not 
a word was spoken. Then the water began 
to gain on Malota, and Bill was sitting like 
a statue in half a foot of water. 

“ Bill, help bail! ” Hanowa spoke. “ Be 
careful. Don’t lean over sides. Two miles 
more.” 

The two lads kept the dugout from being 
swamped and in ten minutes more Hanowa 
steered the canoe into the mouth of a stream 
between two walls of cypress-trees while 
flakes of spume were flying over his head. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 211 

And just as they entered the mouth of the 
creek, a big wave fairly jumped aboard, 
sousing Bill and Malota and half-filling the 
dugout. 

The old sergeant gave a shout. “ Come 
on, ye rollers! Come on! Steer her around 
the bend, Hanowa! Thank God, we made 
it.” 

“ Bad wind. Bad waves. Bad lake! 
Dugout good ship in saw-grass, no good 
riding waves,” Hanowa muttered in Sem¬ 
inole and pushed the dugout ashore on a spot 
which looked as if it might be almost large 
enough for a camp-site. 

Blankets were wrung out and hung on 
a pole to dry, goods and provisions were laid 
out on roots and logs to dry, and the canoe 
was turned over. On the advice of Hanowa 
everybody fell to work with ax or hatchet 
cutting poles and brush to raise the floor of 
their camp-site about a foot off the ground. 
The wind was making the creek flow back 
into the forest, and Hanowa expected the 
water to rise during the night. 

The scene was one of the most impressive 
the campers had yet met on their whole long 


212 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

journey. Gigantic cypress-trees, a hundred 
and fifty feet high, rose from the edge of 
the water and formed a wall of solid forest 
on either side of the creek, and the big trees 
were draped from top to bottom with long 
strands of Spanish moss. 

The white plumage of great numbers of 
Florida herons, egrets, and ibises stood out 
in striking contrast to the somber gray and 
the dense green of the forest; but the an- 
hingas, called snake-birds from their long 
necks, added to the uncanny wildness of the 
primeval forest. 

Although every one was tired after the 
hard work and excitement of the day. Bill 
could not go to sleep for some time that 
night. The moon flooding the creek with 
its yellow light could only send stray beams 
through the foliage of cypress, maple and 
water oak. It did not seem to be the soft 
friendly Southern moon, but a kind of 
supernatural searchlight, which added only 
to the spookiness of the impenetrable forest. 
The wind rushed with a dull moaning sound 
through the tree tops, and in the distance 
roared the waves as they touehed the bottom 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 213 

of the shallow lake and then rolled over and 
over like waves on an ocean beach. And, as 
if all this were not enough to make a man’s 
heart quake and feel its human insignif¬ 
icance, great owls hooted to one another, and 
herds of bull alligators roared and bellowed 
as if they meant to drown the roar of storm 
and waves. 

Bill again took an ax with him into the 
tent. “ If one of them pokes his nose in 
here,” he vowed, “ I am going to split his 
head for him. Father, if we stay here long 
enough, I am going to catch one of those big 
brutes. Hanowa has shown me how to make 
an alligator hook, and I am going to make 
one to-morrow.” 

It turned out that Bill had plenty of time 
to catch more than one alligator, for the 
on-shore wind lasted several days, keeping 
the travelers wind-bound in the forest, and 
truly thankful they were that the storm had 
not caught them on the Pah-hay-o-kee, the 
big grass-water of the Everglades. 

Bill made his alligator hook the next day, 
but Hanowa would not let him use it until 
the creek again flowed into the lake, for the 


214 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

storm was still driving the water up-stream. 
When the wind had subsided Hanowa 
needed a day or two more to catch a few 
otters and prepare their skins, which he 
needed to make leggings for himself and 
Malota. 

At last the day came, when Bill and 
Malota were to make an attempt to catch 
an alligator. The boys brought out the stout 
hook of oak which Bill had made. The 
thing did not look like a hook at all. It was 
really a stick about six or seven inches long, 
sharply pointed at both ends. To the 
middle of the stick the lads attached a stout 
wire about six feet long, and the hook was 
carefully concealed lengthwise in a large 
fish. The lads had had plenty of time to 
locate a crawl, which means a place where 
an alligator is in the habit of coming out of 
the water to sun himself. Near this place 
the boys put out their bait by hanging it 
over a forked stick about two feet above the 
water. To the wire they attached a strong 
rope, and the farther end of the rope they 
tied securely to a large cypress bough, which 
would yield to a strong pull. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 215 

“ Where in the world, Bill, did you get 
the wire and the rope? ’’ asked Munro. 

“ The hostler at Fort Brooke gave them to 
me. Father. I told him I was surely going 
to catch some alligators on this trip.” 

“Well, Bill, I certainly think you ought 
to catch an alligator, if you have been 
planning for it so long ahead.” 

The alligators, however, were evidently 
not of the same opinion. For two hours, 
the boys, concealed behind a big cypress, 
watched their bait until even the patient 
Malota grew tired of waiting and suggested 
that he felt it was time for supper. 

“ They have all gone away. We scared 
them,” he remarked. 

But next morning, when the lads waded 
up to the crawl, Munro heard at first some 
wild yells and then Bill’s voice calling, 
“ Come on. Father! Come quick! ” 

When Munro arrived the boys were tug¬ 
ging hard at the line, which was badly 
twisted and snarled, and if it had been an 
ordinary washline it would have been 
broken, hut Bill’s wire and horse rope had 
been too much for the alligator. 


216 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

The big saurian had tired hiinself by pull¬ 
ing and twisting on the line for hours and 
was quite passive, when with Hanowa’s help 
the fierce-looking snout was raised above the 
wire, but no sooner did he feel bottom than 
he began to thrash about like a mad dragon. 

“ Don’t go near him,” Hanowa cautioned. 
“ If he hits you a whack with his tail, you 
are dead boys! ” 

Munro watched his chance and ended the 
fury of the giant reptile by a bullet sent into 
the eye. The boys pulled him out of the 
creek into shallow water. The creek had 
no real bank; it simply spilled over into the 
forest. Hanowa told the boys to leave the 
beast until morning. 

“ The ’gator is not really dead now,” he 
explained, “ and if he strikes you or bites 
you, you die.” 

In the morning the giant bull, that 
measured twelve feet, Avas quite dead. The 
boys cut off the head to keep the teeth as 
trophies, and towed the body out into the 
lake for birds and fish to feed on, because 
the meat of a big old ’gator, Hanowa said, 
was too strong for people to eat. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


All hands were glad when the time came 
to leave the camp on Taylor’s Creek. That 
is the name by which the stream, which 
meanders into Lake Okeechobee at its most 
northern point, is now known. Hanowa 
called it Alligator Creek, although he was 
not sure that the Indians knew it by that 
name. The campers had followed its 
branches up for several miles, but had found 
no place to land, and no real banks or shore. 
Everywhere the water spread into the end¬ 
less primeval forest, while water-lettuce and 
other floating vegetation made canoe travel 
difficult and toilsome. 

The late Professor Angelo Heilprin, who 
explored certain parts of Florida in 1886, 
including the Caloosahatchee, Lake Okee¬ 
chobee, and Taylor’s Creek gives the follow¬ 
ing account of this part of the great Ochee- 
chobee wilderness: 

“ During my first ascent of the stream, 
which probably consumed in the neighbor- 

217 


218 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


hood of five hours, I must have seen or 
heard in my immediate proximity between 
fifty and seventy-five alligators, and not im¬ 
probably many more. They appear espe¬ 
cially plentiful at about the middle of the 
day, when the elevated temperature calls 
them from their aqueous homes. They de¬ 
light in the masses of floating vegetation 
that hang matted together on the shore line, 
whence they can readily see their prey 
without discovering their own presence. 

“ Nowhere along that portion of the creek 
explored by us did we find a true bank or 
shore, the water on either side spilling off 
into the vast expanse of forest-swamp, 
principally cypress, which here opens out 
from the lake. The heaviest timber gTowth 
is along the eastern tributaries and imme¬ 
diately about the mouth of the creek, where 
the parallel walls of majestic cypresses, 
draped from top to bottom in their funereal 
hangings of Spanish moss, and towering to 
a nearly uniform height of 125-150 feet, 
exhibit to surprising advantage the sylvan 
wonders of this primeval solitude. It 
would be vain to attempt to depict by word 
the solemn grandeur of these untrodden 
wilds, the dark recesses, almost untouched 
by the light of day, that peer forbiddingly 
into a wealth of boundless green—or to 
convey to the mind a true conception of 
the exuberance of vegetable life that is here 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 219 

presented. At no time before our visit had 
I been so thoroughly impressed with the 
wild grandeur of an untrodden wilderness 
—^nowhere where I so keenly appreciated 
the insignificance of my own humble being 
in the sea of life by which I was sur¬ 
rounded.'' 


The travelers felt as if they were escap¬ 
ing from a dragon-infested forest when at 
last they emerged through the gap in the 
giant cypress-trees and saw once more be¬ 
fore them the vast expanse of Okeechobee 
quiet and smiling in the morning sun. 
With light hearts they pointed the canoe to 
the southeast, to the only beach of the great 
lake. Like a long white ribbon, they could 
see it stretched out only six or seven miles 
away. 

“ May we take a swim? May we take a 
swim?" the two boys begged, as soon as 
the canoe ground its bow into the sand. 
Real sand it was, clean sand. It seemed as 
if they had arrived in a wonderland of sun¬ 
shine, after spending a long, long time in 
that haunting wilderness of Mesozoic rep¬ 
tiles and bewitched forests, where the trees 


220 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


grew from strange, fantastic roots directly 
out of the water. 

“ How did these trees get started? Were 
they ever little baby trees? ” Bill had asked, 
but neither Hanowa nor Munro could 
answer the lad’s question. 

“ Boys, you may take a swim, as long a 
swim as you like. But do not stay in so 
long that you get sunburnt.” 

“ If you get sunburnt,” Hanowa told 
them, “ you will be very unhappy, and you 
will not sleep until you catch a big rattle¬ 
snake and rub his oil on your skin. But you 
may swim and yell and stand on your heads, 
for there are no alligators and no sharks on 
this beach, and the water is shallow a long 
way out.” 

And the boys swam and played and gam¬ 
boled like dolphins, until Munro ordered 
them to come out and put their clothes on, 
because he and Hanowa would not have 
time to make rattlesnake oil for them. 

No sooner had they arrived at the camp¬ 
site than they began to clamor for dinner, 
and were very impatient when Munro told 
them that the beans were not quite done. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 221 

When at last Munro dished out bean soup 
and venison, the lads ate beans and venison, 
and more beans and venison until Munro 
took their dishes away and said: “You have 
eaten enough, boys. I have Imown fellows 
to get awfully sick from eating too many 
beans. If you get sick, Hanowa will make 
medicine for you, and I Avill make you take 
it.” 

To this Hanowa nodded assent, with his 
peculiar subdued smile, saying, “ Yes, Sem¬ 
inole medicine is pretty bad,—^very bad for 
a white boy.” 

Not long after dinner the two swimmers 
felt a heavy drowsiness steal over them, and 
lying down in the shade of a spreading oak, 
they were soon fast asleep. How long they 
slept they never knew, but when they woke 
up it was raining cats and dogs, as boys say 
nowadays, for the rainy season had now 
begun in earnest. And in the tent sat 
Munro and Hanowa holding their sides at 
the contortions and grimaces of the boys 
who groaned and talked in their sleep be¬ 
fore they were sufficiently awake to make a 
dash for the tent. 


CHAPTER XXV 


There were several reasons why the trav¬ 
elers remained a full week in the camp near 
the beach. Their blankets, clothing, and 
shoes needed a thorough drying, because in 
the flooded forest at Taylor’s Creek every¬ 
thing had become damp, and mould had 
begun to cover all things made of leather. 
Their powder also needed drying, and they 
used the utmost care not to have any sand 
mixed with the powder, for Munro knew 
only too well that an accidental blow on 
powder mixed with sand might cause an ex¬ 
plosion. Their clothing and shoes were 
badly in need of repairs, for they were soon 
to pass on foot through a country where 
even the Indians would have to wear moc¬ 
casins and leggings. The tent needed a few 
patches, for it rained now almost every day. 
A supply of meat, for at least a few days 
ahead, was also very desirable if they were 
not to depend entirely on such chance game 
as they might be able to secure on their 
journey. Munro and Bill never took kindly 

222 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 223 

to a diet of turtles and young alligators, nor 
did they wish to take a chance on going 
without food for a day or two, which, how¬ 
ever, was something not at all unusual 
among American Indians everywhere. 

And men and boys were in need of rest 
and sunshine and the fresh breeze that blew 
over Lake Okeechobee. So much were the 
boys in love with a camp near a beach, where 
they could go swimming every day without 
fear of alligators, sharks or Indians, that 
Bill wished that they could let Holtess and 
Sokala go, and camp near the beach all 
summer. 

All too soon the day came, when Munro 
and Bill had to strike their small tent, and 
Hanowa and Malota had to desert their 
little bark-covered house, which had shed the 
heaviest showers, and when the canoe had 
to be left behind. 

Bill and Malota soon discovered that the 
party had now entered upon the hardest 
part of their journey. Every man carried 
a load. The marching over wet ground 
through saw-palmetto or other thorny and 
tangled growth was just plain hard work. 


224 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

Almost every day it rained for an hour or 
two, and although they usually managed to 
set up the tent or hastily build a shelter of 
palm leaves, it was often difficult to find a 
dry place for a camp, and quite often they 
marched for hours at a time through water 
half a foot or a foot deep. 

On some days they traveled only ten 
miles, while on other days they covered as 
much as fifteen. Their general direction 
was north, and Hanowa explained that they 
would have to keep going this way for about 
a hundred miles until they struck the river 
Hilaka, now known as St. Johns, the longest 
river of Florida. 

The days were now decidedly warm, but 
where the country was open there was 
always a breeze, sometimes from the east 
and sometimes from the west, for no place 
in Florida is more than sixty miles from the 
ocean. 

Munro was anxious to travel as fast as 
possible, for he could not rid himself of the 
fear that Holtess might reach St. Augus¬ 
tine or Jacksonville ahead of them and 
escape. Hanowa led his friends with great 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 225 


caution to avoid meeting large bodies of 
Seminole warriors. When a camp-site had 
been selected for the night, he climbed a 
tree to scan the country for signs of Indian 
camps, and on two evenings when he saw 
smoke in the distance, he would not allow 
a camp-fire to be built, and every camper 
knows that a camp without a fire is about 
as cheerful as a camp without water. 

However, although the four men traveled 
with extreme caution and did all their hunt¬ 
ing with bow and arrows, they nevertheless 
fell in with a small party of young Seminole 
warriors, who were not at all in a friendly 
mood. They wanted to see what the white 
man and his companions had in their packs. 
They wanted presents, and they were much 
in want of powder and lead. Unless their 
demands were complied with, they threat¬ 
ened to make prisoners of the two white 
men, or “ Maybe we killum,” their leader 
asserted. 

To these men Hanowa showed a firmness 
and boldness which made Munro realize that 
Hanowa was not only an excellent scout and 
guide, but a real man in a grave emergency. 


226 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

“ These white men are my brothers,’’ he 
told the warriors. ” Elalia is not fighting 
our people, but he has been in many battles. 
You cannot make him and his son prisoners, 
for they will fight, and they have better 
guns than you have, and I shall fight on 
their side. It may be you can kill us, but 
if you do, all of you will go with us to the 
land of spirits. I am going to take these 
men to St. Augustine. You know that our 
great chief Osceola wants no injury done to 
harmless people. If you are men, sit down 
and be friends; but if you wish to fight we 
are ready, and we have enough bullets in 
our guns and pistols to kill every man of 
you. I have spoken.” 

The Seminoles sat down, Hanowa made 
each a gift of tobacco, while Munro and Bill 
stood by their guns with their pistols partly 
drawn out of the holsters. 

“ Now, go on your way,” Hanowa spoke, 
when each man had received his gift. “Any 
man that tries to follow us or spy on us, 
will be a dead man. Our guns can shoot one 
bullet through two men.” 

The young men did as they had been 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 227 

ordered, and Hanowa and Munro stood at 
their guns until the last man was out of 
sight. 

Then the four men marched briskly north¬ 
ward, so as not to give the Seminoles a 
chance to circle around and attack them 
from ambush. They also took the precau¬ 
tion of not marching in single file, but they 
spread out so that each man made as little 
of a trail as possible. 

They marched until dark and made their 
camp on an open prairie in a clump of 
bushes without building a fire and without 
setting up a tent. 

“ The Seminoles will not attack us here 
during the night,” Hanowa told his friends, 
“ because they believe that a man who is 
killed at night will have to live in darkness 
in the other world. If they have seen us 
make camp, they may attack us early in the 
morning. We must now lay down our 
packs as if we would mark a square place, 
and near our packs we must throw up some 
dirt. Then if we have to fight, each man 
can lie down behind a little wall and the 
Indians cannot hit us, but we shall quickly 


228 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

kill every man who shows his head above the 
grass.” 

The two boys, after they had helped to 
build the little fort, rolled up in their blan¬ 
kets, and being very tired after the hard 
work and the excitement of the day, they 
were soon fast asleep. 

For Hanowa and Munro there was no 
sleep. At the first sign of dawn they called 
the boys. “ Take your places and be ready 
to fight,” Munro told them. “ Now is the 
time.” 

A blue jay came out of the woods, perched 
for a second on a prickly ash over Munro’s 
head, and returned to the woods with a 
frightened scream. “ That pesky jaybird! ” 
muttered Munro. “ There he goes and tells 
everybody where we are.” 

For ten or fifteen minutes every man 
peered sharply over his pack, with his gun 
ready cocked. Then a deer came leisurely 
out of the timber, nibbled a bite of food now 
and then and passed within twenty yards of 
the improvised fort. 

“ Thank God! We are safe,” exclaimed 
Munro, relieving the tension. “ Now let us 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 229 


get away from here/’ And every man 
shouldered his pack, and for two miles the 
party marched briskly eastward, while not 
a word was spoken. 

At the end of two miles, they again turned 
north and traveled until the day grew hot. 
Then they stopped to eat and rest for sev¬ 
eral hours in the shade of scrubby pines. 
Munro and Hanowa lay down to sleep while 
the boys took turns as camp sentinels. 

They broke camp early next morning and 
made good time through fairly open piny 
woods. All were in high spirits after their 
escape from serious danger, and Hanowa 
said they were not very many miles from a 
lake, where they would stop for a good rest, 
and perhaps, he said, they might find a 
canoe or they might make one. For out of 
this lake ran the river Hilaka, large enough 
for a canoe. At this news Bill would have 
let out a yell, if all noise had not been 
strictly forbidden. Bill was a stout boy, and 
marching in hot summer days, and at times 
marching in the rain, when the packs grew 
heavy, was not Bill’s favorite way of travel¬ 
ing. 


230 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

This happy march came to a sudden end, 
when without warning they almost walked 
into the midst of a dozen Seminole warriors, 
mostly young men, who had been lying down 
for a rest in a grove of large pines. These 
warriors demanded the surrender of the two 
white men. They had lost a warrior in a 
skirmish with the soldiers and they were go¬ 
ing to kill and scalp the white man and make 
the boy their prisoner. Hanowa with his 
party had quickly backed away from the 
Seminoles and asked them to let their leader 
come over for a talk. But the fellows were 
in an ugly mood. They wanted no talk. 
They wanted the two white men or they 
would fight. 

“ Take trees! ’’ Hanowa spoke quietly to 
his party. “ I think we fight here.” 

The four men slowly receded still farther 
from the angry Seminoles, keeping their 
faces toward the warriors, while Hanowa 
continued to argue with them, and each of 
the four men held his gun in readiness. 

“ Throw packs! ” Hanowa ordered in a 
low voice, when the four men had reached 
the place to which Hanowa had been retreat- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 231 

ing, Hanowa and Malota dropped their 
packs close to a large tree, one pack on each 
side. Munro and Bill dropped their packs 
at another big tree. It was all done before 
the Seminoles realized that these four men 
actually meant to put up a fight against 
three times their own number. 

But now they gave a yell of rage, fol¬ 
lowed by the piercing Seminole war-whoop: 

Yo-hchceheej yo-ho-eehee! 

If the Seminoles had thought that their 
yells would cause the hearts of their antag¬ 
onists to faint, they were much in error, for 
Bill and his father repeated their challenge 
and dared the Indians to come on. But 
Hanowa made a last attempt to prevent 
bloodshed. 

“ Do not fight, brothers,” he called to the 
warriors in Seminole. “ My white brothers 
do not wish to fight. They only wish to 
leave our country in peace. We will make 
you presents, but our guns are bad medi¬ 
cine!” 

The answer to his pleading was a bullet 
that peeled a piece of bark off his tree, and 
another ball struck Munro’s pack with a dull 


232 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

thud. “ I am mighty glad Hanowa drilled 
us yesterday,” whispered Bill. 

“ It is a fight,” spoke Hanowa. “ If they 
get us, they will kill us all.” 

The Indians were gradually coming 
closer, but Hanowa had chosen a position 
where the Indians could neither surround 
nor flank the four men, who thus far had 
not fired a shot. 

“ Get ready to fire,” Munro called, “ and 
shoot to kill! We are lost if we give them 
a chance to rush us.” And with those words 
he fired the first shot. 

One Seminole uttered a yell of rage or 
pain and staggered back into some bushes. 
But now Munro saw two men crawl toward 
the left. 

“ Here, Bill, quick,” he whispered. 
‘‘ Load my rifle and hand me your shot¬ 
gun.” 

A well-aimed load of buckshot brought a 
cry of pain or surprise, Munro did not know 
which, from the two men who jumped up 
and rushed back for cover as fast as they 
could go. Munro could have dropped both 
of them dead with the other load of buck- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 233 

shot, but he was glad to let them run. How¬ 
ever, he told Bill to fire his pistol with as 
good an aim as possible, “ just to show the 
rascals that we are never a minute without 
a loaded gun.” 

Apparently the Seminoles were no longer 
in the mood even to think of rushing the 
enemy. Their shots came from a greater 
distance and went quite wild. 

“You are rotten shooters!” Bill yelled. 
“ Come on! Give Father a peep! He will 
show you how to shoot! ” 

And one of the Indians very soon did give 
Father more than a peep. The fellow had 
climbed an oak, and if he got up ten feet 
higher the packs would no longer offer any 
protection to Bill and his father. “ I have 
to bring that fellow down,” Munro whis¬ 
pered. “ Hand me the rifle. Bill! ” 

Some dark body now shut off a speck of 
light that had been visible through the tree 
against the western sky, where the sun was 
just setting. Munro took careful aim, 
pointing his gun through a slit between the 
tree and the pack. At the sound of the shot 
a heavy body either dropped or jumped to 


234 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

the ground, but there was no call or outcry, 
telling that a man was hit. 

Elaha, I think you killed him,’’ Hanowa 
spoke. 

“ I had to do it,” Munro replied. “ That 
fellow was getting dangerous, and he was 
a pretty good shot.” 

That was the last shot fired in the skir¬ 
mish. None of Munro’s party had been 
wounded. Hanowa and Malota had not 
fired a shot, but the man in the tree had fired 
two balls that came uncomfortably close to 
Bill and his father. 

Very soon darkness fell, and although Bill 
and Munro strained their ears, they could 
not be certain that they had detected any 
movement of the enemy. Hanowa, how¬ 
ever, assured them that the Seminoles would 
not think of renewing the fight. 

“ They have had enough fighting,” he as¬ 
sured Munro. “ You wounded some of 
them, and I think one man is dead, maybe 
two. The others are now carrying away the 
dead and wounded, for Indians never leave 
dead or wounded men. They always take 
them along. We must now take up our 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 235 

packs and travel toward the lake of which I 
told you.’’ 

It was the first all-night march Bill had 
ever experienced. Sometimes the going was 
fairly open, but there were also stretches of 
brush and ugly saw-palmetto, and several 
miles of ground covered with water. The 
night grew very dark and it rained enough 
to wet the brush, which caused every man 
to be soaking wet up to his hips. 

After midnight the sky cleared, and about 
an hour before daybreak Hanowa stopped 
and said, “ We are now only a little way 
from the lake. We make camp here. We 
build a little fire and eat food. Elaha, you 
and the boys stay here and sleep. When 
you wake up, you can build another little 
fire. No Indians will come here, if you do 
not make a smoke that rises above the trees. 
When I have eaten, I go away to scout, and 
I come back before the sun goes down.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 


Hanowa returned before sunset as he had 
promised, and he brought with him some 
news,—indeed, he brought almost too much 
news. He had found, as he had expected, 
a camp of his friends, but only women and 
children were living in the camp. The men 
had all been away for months. The old 
woman who acted as the ruler of the camp, 
had obstinately refused to sell him a canoe. 
She had said they had only two and they 
needed them both, and her son would be 
angry if she sold his canoe. 

“ I was afraid that it would be difficult to 
buy a canoe,” Hanowa continued, “ so I had 
taken with me a few things of which the 
Seminole women are very fond. 

“ ‘ Mother,’ I spoke to her, ‘ my friends 
and I must have a canoe. We have no time 
to make one. I cannot steal it, so you must 
sell it to me. I have here a bagful of beads. 
Red and blue they are, and I give them to 
you for the canoe.’ 


236 


<C i 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 237 

It is not enough/ she replied. ‘ My 
daughter needs more beads. The string 
must wind around her neck many times.’ 

JVIother/ I told her, ‘ we have come to 
you over a very long trail. We have come 
from Fort Brooke. We have seen the Big 
Cypress Swamp and the Everglades. We 
have crossed many rivers. We have crossed 
the great lake Okeechobee, where we had to 
leave our canoe under the trees near the sand 
beach. Now our feet are sore and bleeding 
from our long march through the saw-pal¬ 
metto, over rocks and through much water. 
I also give you one blue and one green ker¬ 
chief. We have no more.’ 

“ The woman looked at the kerchiefs. She 
took them in her hands and she said, ‘ Beau¬ 
tiful! Beautiful! Take the canoe. Take it 
away early at sunrise, before my son returns. 
When he sees the red and the blue cloth on 
his old mother he will forget that he was 
angry.’ ” 

But Hanowa had more news. The women 
had seen Holtess and Sokala. Two days 
before, they had been at the camp. The 
white nian looked very haggard. His tent 


238 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

had many holes, and he had no net to pro¬ 
tect him against mosquitoes, which like a 
white man much better than an Indian. 
One silver dollar the white man had given 
to the women, and Sokala had told them 
that the white man was rich. Many white 
dollars he had, and many big yellow ones. 

At this news, Munro, who had always 
worried at the leisurely way in which Han- 
owa had conducted their journey, became 
much excited. 

‘‘ Hanowa,” he exclaimed, “ I always felt 
it in my bones that we were traveling too 
slow. He has given us the slip; he is gone.” 

The Seminole seemed to ignore the sting 
in Munro’s words, when he replied quietly, 

Elaha, your bones told you wrong. He is 
on the river Hilaka, but he is not gone. He 
cannot travel as fast as we can go. What 
could we do with the bad white man if we 
had already caught him? We would have 
to kill him, or he would run away from us 
and come back to kill us. Let him go ahead. 
Maybe we shall catch him at St. Augustine 
or at some other place.” 

“ Yes, maybe we shall catch him on a big 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 239 
% 

ship on the ocean,” Munro replied, not at 
all convinced that his plans had not mis¬ 
carried. 

Elaha/^ retorted Hanowa with a touch 
of injury, “ if you will be angry, then Ma- 
lota and I can return to Fort Brooke, and 
you and boy Billy can travel as fast as you 
like. You cannot lose your way on the river 
Hilaka/^ 

After this reproof, Munro apologized to 
his friend, and never again forgot that there 
could be no absolute certainty about the out¬ 
come of the venture in which they had en¬ 
gaged. What, indeed, could they do with 
Holtess, if they had caught him at this time 
and place? 

A whole book might be written about the 
two-hundred-mile trip down the St. Johns 
from Lake Poinsett to a point opposite St. 
Augustine; but the four men in the canoe 
had now very little time to enjoy the beau¬ 
ties and marvels of trees, birds, and flowers, 
which all reminded them much of their 
camps on the Caloosahatchee. However, it 
was now the month of June, and the days 
were hot, although not unbearably hot, be- 


240 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

cause refreshing showers cooled the atmos¬ 
phere almost daily, and several times the 
party traveled all night under the soft 
Southern moon, which to this day makes a 
night trip on the St. Johns an event that is 
never forgotten. 

The party lived now almost entirely on 
fish and water fowl, both of which were 
incredibly abundant. Once they secured a 
kettleful of wild honey, not indeed without 
being badly stung. Wild honey, baked fish, 
the last of the beans, the last handful of 
coffee, long hoarded, and wild oranges, fur¬ 
nished them the last Sunday dinner on the 
St. Johns. 

Any fish that took the hook was a good 
fish, be it called pike, bass, sucker, trout, or 
gar; the travelers had no time to be fastid¬ 
ious, and long hours of paddling gave them 
a keen appetite. 

At some camping-places the mosquitoes 
were quite troublesome, but Munro, having 
learned from previous sad experience, had 
provided himself with mosquito-netting and 
cheesecloth to keep any insect pests out of 
his tent. The two Indians suffered less 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 241 

from the attacks of mosquitoes, the worst of 
all insect pests. When the little brutes were 
too thick, the two Indians built a smudge or 
pulled a blanket over their heads in spite 
of the warm night. Why houses and rooms 
in the South were not screened against flies 
and mosquitoes, Munro could never under¬ 
stand. 

They found the river alive with alligators, 
although the creatures did not exist in such 
abundance and did not cause them the an¬ 
noyance which the English naturalist, Wil¬ 
liam Bartram, reports during 1773 from a 
region of the St. Johns Biver opposite the 
present town of New Smyrna. We shall let 
the explorer tell his story in his own words: 

“ The evening was temperately cool and 
calm. The crocodiles began to roar and ap¬ 
pear in uncommon numbers along the shores 
and in the river. I fixed my camp in an 
open plain, near the utmost projection of the 
promontory, under the shelter of a large live 
oak, which stood on the highest part of the 
ground, and but a few yards from my boat. 
From this open, high situation, I had a free 
prospect of the river, which was a matter of 
no trivial consideration to me, having good 
reason to dread the subtle attacks of the alii- 


242 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


gators, who were crowding about my har¬ 
bour.” 

From his harbor, as he calls the place, 
Bartram rowed to a lagoon to catch a few 
bass for his supper and breakfast. He left 
his gun in camp for fear of dropping it over¬ 
board, but he provided himself with a club. 
In the lagoon he witnessed a fight between 
two large alligators, and then his story con¬ 
tinues as follows: 

“ My apprehensions were highly alarmed 
after being a spectator of so dreadful a bat¬ 
tle. It was obvious that every delay would 
but tend to increase my dangers and diffi¬ 
culties, as the sun was near setting, and the 
alligators gathered around my harbour from 
all quarters. From these considerations I 
concluded to be expeditious in my trip to 
the lagoon, in order to take some fish. Not 
thinking it prudent to take my fusee with 
me, lest I might lose it overboard in case of 
a battle, which I had every reason to dread 
before my return, I therefore furnished my¬ 
self with a club for my defense, went on 
board, and penetrating the first line of those 
which surrounded my harbour, they gave 
way; but being pursued by several very 
large ones, I kept strictly on the watch, and 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 243 


paddled with all my might towards the en¬ 
trance of the lagoon, hoping to be sheltered 
there from the multitude of my assailants; 
but ere I had half-way reached the place, I 
was attacked on all sides, several endeavor¬ 
ing to overset the canoe. My situation now 
became precarious to the last degree; two 
very large ones attacked me closely at the 
same instant, rushing up with their heads 
and paii: of their bodies above the water, 
roaring terribly and belching floods of water 
over me. They struck their jaws together 
so close to my ears, as almost to stun me, 
and I expected every moment to be dragged 
out of the boat and instantly devoured. But 
I applied my weapons so effectually about 
me, though at random, that I was so suc¬ 
cessful as to beat them off a little; when, 
finding that they designed to renew the bat¬ 
tle, I made for the shore, as the only means 
left me for my preservation; for, by keeping- 
close to it, I should have my enemies on one 
side of me only, whereas I was before sur¬ 
rounded by them; and there was a prob¬ 
ability, if pushed to the last extremity, of 
saving myself by jumping out of the canoe 
on shore, as it is easy to outwalk them on 
land, although comparatively as swift as 
lightning in the water. I found this last 
expedient alone could fully answer my ex¬ 
pectations^ for as soon as I gained the shore, 
they drew off and kept aloof. 


244 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


“ I accordingly proceeded, and made good 
my entrance into the lagoon, though not 
without opposition from the alligators, who 
formed a line across the entrance, but did 
not pursue me into it, nor was I molested 
by any there, though there were some very 
large ones in a cove at the upper end. I 
soon caught more trout than I had present 
occasion for, and the air was too hot and 
sultry to admit of their being kept for many 
hours, even though salted or barbecued. I 
now prepared for my return to camp, which 
I succeeded in with but little trouble, by 
keeping close to the shore; yet I was op¬ 
posed upon reentering the river out of the 
lagoon, and pursued near to my landing 
(though not closely attacked), particularly 
by an old daring one, about twelve feet in 
length, who kept close after me; and when 
I stepped on shore and turned about, in 
order to draw up my canoe, he rushed up 
near my feet, and lay there for some time, 
looking me in the face, his head and shoul¬ 
ders out of water. I resolved he should pay 
for his temerity, and having a heavy load in 
my fusee, I ran to my camp, and returning 
with my piece, found him with his foot on 
the gunwale of the boat, in search of fish. 
On my coming up he withdrew sullenly and 
slowly into the water, but soon returned and 
placed himself in his former position, look¬ 
ing at me, and seeming neither fearful nor 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 245 


any way disturbed. I soon dispatched him 
by lodging the contents of my gun in his 
head, and then proceeded to cleanse and 
prepare my fish for supper; and accordingly 
took them out of the boat, laid them down 
on the land close to the water, and began to 
scale them; when, raising my head, I saw 
before me, through the clear water, the head 
and shoulders of a very large alligator, 
moving slowly towards me. I instantly 
stepped back, when, with a sweep of his tail, 
he brushed off several of my fish. It was 
certainly most providential that I looked up 
at that instant, as the monster would prob¬ 
ably, in less than a minute, have seized and 
dragged me into the river. This incredible 
boldness of the animal disturbed me greatly, 
supposing there could now be no reasonable 
safety for me during the night, but by keep¬ 
ing continually on the watch: I therefore, as 
soon as I had prepared the fish, proceeded 
to secure myself and effects in the best man¬ 
ner I could. In the first place, I hauled my 
bark upon the shore, almost clear out of the 
water, to prevent their oversetting or sinking 
her; after this, every moveable was taken out 
and carried to my camp which was but a 
few yards off; then ranging some dry wood 
in such order as was the most convenient, I 
cleared the ground round about it, that 
there might be no impediment in my way, 
in case of an attack in the night, either from 


246 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


the water or the land; for I discovered by 
this time, that this small isthmus, from its 
remote situation and fruitfulness, was 
resorted to by bears and wolves. 

“ It was by this time dusk, and the alli¬ 
gators had nearly ceased their roar, when I 
was again alarmed by a tumultuous noise 
that seemed to be in my harbour, and there¬ 
fore engaged my immediate attention. Re¬ 
turning to my camp, I found it undisturbed, 
and then continued on to the extreme point 
of the promontory, where I saw a scene, 
new and surprising, which at first threw my 
senses into such a tumult, that it was some 
time before I could comprehend what was 
the matter; however, I soon accounted for 
the prodigious assemblage of crocodiles at 
this place, which exceeded every thing of the 
kind I had ever heard of. 

“ How shall I express myself so as to con¬ 
vey an adequate idea of it to the reader, and 
at the same time avoid raising suspicions of 
my veracity. Should I say, that the river 
(in this place) from shore to shore, and per¬ 
haps near half a mile above and below me, 
appeared to be one solid bank of fish, of 
various kinds, pushing through this narrow 
pass of St. Juan’s into the little lake, on 
their return down the river, and that the alli¬ 
gators were in such incredible numbers, and 
so close together from shore to shore, that 
it would have been easy to have walked 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 247 


across on their heads, had the animals been 
harmless? ” 

Thus runs, with some omissions, the story 
of William Bartram. The account bears all 
the marks of truthfulness, although it sounds 
almost incredible. At the present time one 
is not likely to see more than two or three 
small alligators on the long boat trip on the 
St. Johns from Jacksonville to Sanborn. 
The curse that Bill Munro wished upon 
them has indeed fallen upon the alligators. 

It took Hanowa and his party five days to 
make the journey from Lake Poinsett to a 
point opposite St. Augustine. 

By keeping a careful lookout ahead, they 
avoided meeting several small parties of 
Seminoles, and Munro and Bill resorted 
once more to the ruse of making themselves 
look like black men, when they had to pass 
a large party of Seminole warriors. By 
keeping close to the other shore, where the 
river was half a mile wide and pretending 
that they were trying to flush some ducks 
out of the rushes, they passed the warriors 
without being molested or even suspected. 


248 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

When they had selected a well-concealed 
camp-site opposite St. Augustine, it became 
the duty of Munro and Bill to go on a scout¬ 
ing trip to the old town, about fifteen miles 
to the east, for Hanowa was too cautious to 
venture into the white man’s town, nor 
would he allow Malota to go. 

The fact that they had seen no sign of 
Holtess and Sokala gave rise to much un¬ 
easiness and to several puzzling questions. 
Could they have passed the fugitives? The 
St. Johns is a wide, winding river; it flows 
through several lakes, and to look for two 
men, who did not wish to be seen, would have 
been like looking for Bill’s lost marble in the 
Everglades. Munro and Hanowa had not 
attempted it. They felt that they had been 
lucky not to fall into the hands of the Sem¬ 
inole warriors. Perhaps Holtess and Sokala 
had been captured by the warriors. If they 
had made the journey safely they could not 
be far ahead of their pursuers. In fact, it 
seemed quite possible that Munro and Bill 
would meet them on the streets or in the 
stores of St. Augustine. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


The trip from the St. Johns River to St. 
Augustine meant a march of about eighteen 
miles, and it seemed strange to both Bill and 
his father to be walking on a fairly plain 
trail to a white man’s town, although Han- 
owa had cautioned them to be on the lookout 
against lurking Seminole warriors. 

Father and son marched briskly as if they 
were going to an old-time Fourth of July 
celebration and were afraid that they might 
miss a part of the doings, the sack races, 
spoon races, or even the big dinner. 

They reached St. Augustine long before 
the sun indicated noon. What a strange, 
fascinating thing to see houses, streets, gar¬ 
dens, and white people! Their first visit was 
to the post-office to mail letters to Bill’s 
mother. It was at the post-office that they 
had their first surprise. In a conspicuous 
place of the building, where every caller 
could read it, hung the poster Major Belton 
had promised to send to St. Augustine. 

249 


250 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 


There was a good description of Holtess and 
Sokala. And the reward offered for their 
capture, “ dead or alive ’’ it said, was $500 
for the Avhite man and $200 for the Indian. 

The post-office was in a store and the 
storekeeper was also the postmaster. He 
saw at once that his customers were 
strangers. 

“ Be ye interested in that there placard? ’’ 
he asked. ‘‘Ye should have been in town 
yesterday,” he volunteered. “A wild-look« 
ing stranger came in. He bought a bottle 
of whiskey and some lead and powder. He 
paid me with a twenty-dollar gold piece. 
Well, I don’t see many of them, so I looked 
pretty closely at the stranger and his money. 
I thought he left pretty quick after he had 
read that there placard. I know that there 
card by heart, and that stranger was not out 
of the store five minutes, when it struck me 
that he was the man that card describes. 
My son Jack and I, we jumped on our 
horses and scoured this old town, every 
street and alley, and the water front. We 
followed the trail half-way to the river. We 
took a run for three or four miles on the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 251 

road to Bulow’s sugar mill, which the In¬ 
dians burnt, when the war began, but never 
a hair or a track did we see of that stranger. 
I reckon perhaps ye two be after him, too, 
and I wish you better luck.” 

Munro quietly stepped on BiUy’s toes so 
the boy responded with a loud, “ Ouch, 
Father! Can’t you see me?” 

“ We should not mind picking up a few 
hundred dollars,” Munro admitted, simulat¬ 
ing indifference, “ if the fellow did not fight 
too hard. Was he armed? ” 

“ I did not see a gun on him,” the man 
replied, but he might have carried a pistol 
in his jeans; he probably did. He looked 
kind of starved, as if he had been living with 
the Indians.” 

Munro knew enough, so he changed the 
subject of conversation by asking the man 
for the best place in town to get dinner; 
and he and Bill agreed that they had never 
eaten a better meal than was served to them 
by a lady one square east from the post- 
office. 

After dinner they made a few more pur¬ 
chases in another store, for they feared the 


252 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

inquisitiveness of their first acquaintance, 
and then they sauntered slowly to the out¬ 
skirts of the town. As soon as they were 
out of sight of the last house, they increased 
their pace to a brisk walk, and half an hour 
before sunset they arrived at Hanowa’s 
camp, where a supper of broiled bass and 
’possum and boiled cabbage palmetto awaited 
them. 

“We found their camp,” Malota told 
Bill. “ Little fire. A white man and a 
Seminole. We read the signs, Hanowa and 
I.” 

“And we are hot on their trail. Father 
and I,” Bill responded with just a trace of 
brag in his voice. “ The bad white man was 
in the post-office yesterday, and we are going 
to catch them at Jacksonville to-morrow or 
next day.” 

The boys were for taking to the river im¬ 
mediately after supper, but since Bill and 
his father had walked over thirty miles, 
Hanowa advised that they all sleep until 
midnight, when the moon would rise. 

“It is bad to travel on the wide river in 
the dark,” he added. “ If we wait until the 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 253 

moon comes up we shall get to Jacksonville 
just as soon.’’ 

They reached Jacksonville at noon next 
day. Hanowa and Malota hid in the woods, 
while Munro and Bill went scouting for the 
fugitives in the town, which at that time was 
a very small village. They did not catch 
Holtess, but they learned that he had left 
early in the forenoon with the intention of 
flagging a ship at the Point. The Point is 
a piece of high wooded bluff, which travelers 
see on their left as the present-day steamers 
from the North enter the mouth of the St. 
Johns River. 

Major Belton had sent no posters to 
Jacksonville, and since Holtess had never 
learned that he was being pursued, he had 
not taken the precaution to conceal his 
movements. 

But he would not wait for a ship at Jack¬ 
sonville, although he had been told that he 
might have to sit on the Point for a month 
without being able to hail a ship. 

The pursuers started after the fugitives 
without delay and landed on the Point under 
cover of darkness. At dawn of day they 


254 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

selected a camp in a place where they could 
not be seen. They pulled their canoe out of 
the water and hid it in the brush. Then 
they sat down to breakfast without making 
a fire and held what Munro called a council 
of war. 

“ I see,” said Munro, “ that the Point is 
covered with pine and oak scrub. I think we 
should advance two and two, about fifteen 
yards apart, so we can see each other and 
make signals. We must go slow, make no 
noise, and see them first.” 

“ The plan is good,” spoke Hanowa. “ If 
they have set up the rag tent, then I think 
one of them will be in or near the tent and 
the other will be watching for a ship. Elaha, 
where does he keep the stolen money? Does 
he carry it back and forth between the sea 
and the tent? Is it in the tent? Or where 
is it? ” 

“ I think it is hidden not far from the 
tent,” Munro expressed his opinion, “ but I 
have no idea how we might find the spot.” 

After they had crept up on the high bank 
and had scouted toward the end of the Point 
for some two hundred yards, Munro saw 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 255 

something which made him stop short and 
signal Hanowa to stop. It was only a little 
thing, a blaze cut on a tree with a hunting- 
knife. Bill pointed toward his left. 
‘‘Father,” he whispered, “there is another 
blaze.” 

Munro began to wonder why any one 
should blaze a trail on a point of land of 
only a few hundred acres between the river 
and the sea. What could it mean? He 
looked back and suddenly his eyes caught 
two other small blazes which the four scouts 
had passed, because'they faced in the same 
direction the scouts were going. Suddenly 
Munro remembered that Holtess had dab¬ 
bled in surveying. Two lines crossing from 
four different blazes would fix a point. He 
walked along one of the lines, until he came 
to the point of intersection with the other 
line. The ground felt a little different under 
foot at this point. He bent over and drove 
his hunting knife into it. The knife struck 
and pierced something which felt like hide 
or leather. Munro dug into the ground with 
both hands and brought out a small heavy 
bag. Impatiently he ripped it open, and 


256 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

there lay the gold and silver coins stolen at 
Fort Brooke. But the coins did not shine 
like gold and silver; they had a strange and 
dirt}’' look. 

‘‘ Bee grease,” whispered Hanowa. They 
cannot say, ‘ Chink, chink.’ ” 

After the bag was cleaned of dirt, Munro 
made out the faint outlines of the letters 
‘‘ U. S. A.” and he remembered the bag as 
having disappeared at the time the money 
was stolen. 

Bill swung his arms over his head and 
danced like a mad Indian. He could not let 
out any yells and there was too much brush 
for somersaults. 

“ We will take that stuff to our camp,” 
advised Munro, “ and come back to capture 
Holtess. We must lose no time. If he 
returns and discovers that his loot is gone, 
he will accuse and murder that poor Indian, 
Sokala, if indeed the Indian is still with 
him.” 

“We might watch until he comes to look 
for it,” suggested Hanowa. 

“ NTo, brother, we cannot wait for that,” 
replied Munro. “We must go and get him. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 257 


And where is Sokala? No one at St. Augus¬ 
tine and Jacksonville had seen him.” 

Before they left their camp, every man 
took a long drink of water out of his can¬ 
teen, for there was no fresh water on the 
Point, only the sea on one side and the 
brackish river on the other. It was Hanowa 
who had thought of this difficulty and had 
told his friends to fill the canteens, which 
had been carried in their packs for months. 

A hundred yards beyond the blazed trees 
they discovered the rag tent; but it appeared 
to be deserted. Hanowa and Malota crept 
up to it in a way which only an Indian is 
able to master. They found Sokala lying 
asleep behind it. Without a sound being 
heard, they woke him up and brought him 
back to the place where Munro and Bill were 
waiting. The poor fellow looked dazed and 
half-starved. He did not seem to realize 
that he was a prisoner, but he pointed at 
Hanowa’s canteen and said in Seminole, 
Weva, wexxi! We have no water.” And 
he almost emptied Hanowa’s canteen. 

“ Hanowa, you and Malota had better 
take him back to camp and feed him. Bill 


258 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

and I will try to bring in Holt ess,” sug¬ 
gested Munro. 

After Sokala had told them that the white 
man had gone to look for a big ship, Munro 
quickly formed a plan to capture the outlaw. 
He and Bill concealed themselves in the 
tent, which had holes enough so that they 
could watch on all sides. 

They had waited only about half an hour, 
when they heard a man calling, “ Hoh, you 
lazy Indian! Wake up and find some water. 
Why didn’t you tell me there was no water 
on this blooming point? ” 

They could see him coming now. If he 
was trying to pose as a shipwrecked sailor, 
he looked the part. He had no hat, his beard 
and hair had not been cut for months, his 
eyes were sunken and his face drawn and 
haggard like that of a man half starved, and 
worn out with hardship and loss of sleep. 
His tattered clothes hung loose on his body 
and his feet were encased in crude mocca¬ 
sins made of raw deer-hide. When he had 
approached within ten paces, Munro stepped 
quickly out of the tent and said sharply, 
“ Drop that gun and throw up your hands! 


>> 





“Drop that GUHV^—Page 258 , 




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THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 259 

When the man hesitated a second, the ser¬ 
geant added quietly, “ You are through, 
Holtess. This gun is loaded with buckshot.” 
And the captive did as he had been told. 

“ Bill, come and search him for a pistol 
and take his knife,” Munro called, “ and 
then cover him while I tie his hands behind 
his back.” 

“ You need not look for my pistol,” Hol¬ 
tess told them. “ I dropped the thing over¬ 
board into a water-hole in those terrible 
Everglades. Take the knife and give me a 
drink of water. I have not tasted a drop 
since yesterday morning.” 

When father and son reached camp with 
their captive, Hanowa was frying the bacon 
and Malota was cutting up three loaves of 
bread which Munro had brought from Jack¬ 
sonville. The tent had been set up, for a 
welcome noonday shower was approaching, 
and in a short time there was enough fresh 
water in the bottom of the canoe to satisfy 
everybody. 

During the meal the sergeant sat near the 
entrance to the tent, while Holtess was 
placed in the rear. 


260 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

‘‘ Sergeant, you need not watch me,” said 
Holtess. “ I could not walk a mile if I tried 
to. If you will give me another feed like 
this and let me go I will return the money 
to you, all except a few pieces. I was a fool 
ever to touch it. If you had not come along 
at this time, I believe I should have lain 
down in that old tent and died like a dog. 
We had not a scrap of food and not a drop 
of water.” 

You need not trouble about that money 
any more,” Munro told him. “ We found 
that before we found you. And we cannot 
let you go, because we have come after you 
a long way.” 

“ What are you going to do with me? ” 

“We are going to take you to Jackson¬ 
ville. What they will do with you there, I 
do not know.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


What to do with his prisoners at Jack¬ 
sonville proved to be more of a puzzle than 
Munro had anticipated. The village pos¬ 
sessed a jail, but no jailor. The magistrate, 
who was known as the Judge, and who said 
that he was a justice of the peace, ordered 
the town marshal to unlock the jail, but told 
Munro that he would have to watch the pris¬ 
oners and feed them, because the town had 
no funds for such purposes. The Judge 
also informed Munro that since the case 
involved more than a hundred dollars and 
was evidently a case of grand larceny, his 
court was not competent to handle the case. 
Here was a pretty mess! 

Bill and Malota were put as guards over 
the prisoners. Bill’s gun was loaded with 
buckshot, and some half-dozen boys of the 
village promptly joined the guard. Bill 
and Malota were the heroes of the day, en¬ 
vied by every small boy in town. The pris¬ 
oners appeared not at all inclined to escape, 

261 


262 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

for at Munro’s expense a good woman fur¬ 
nished them with two meals a day, the like 
of which they had not enjoyed for six 
months. A complete rest and two square 
meals a day were quite acceptable to them. 

In the afternoon, Munro and Hanowa 
took Sokala out under a live oak for a hear¬ 
ing, at which several important points were 
cleared up. Sokala told that the white man 
was a magician or medicine man. He had a 
magic instrument which always told him 
which way to travel. He also had a little 
bottle in which was confined the dreaded 
smallpox sickness. Holtess had said to 
Sokala: 

“ If you do not go with me until I find a 
ship, I shall give to you and all your people 
the smallpox, and you will all die; but if you 
stay with me, I shall give you twenty white 
dollars.” 

The money in the bag Holtess had said 
he had earned by measuring roads and land 
for the soldiers and for other white people. 
He had had a fight with a soldier, and now 
all the soldiers were mad at him and wanted 
to take the money away from him. He had 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 263 

a squaw and five papooses at a town called 
“ Baltmore ” and he was going to take the 
money to them. Sokala had seen Holtess 
bury the money after he had cut a blaze on 
four trees. He did not wish to leave the 
money in the tent, because some soldiers 
might come and steal it. 

Munro wrote out this story in the form of 
an affidavit. He and Hanowa and Bill 
signed it as witnesses in the presence of the 
Judge. Under the affidavit Munro placed 
this signature, Sokala, X, His mark,” and 
the Judge put a red seal on the paper. Then 
Munro showed Sokala the parchment Major 
Belton had given him, and spoke to him in 
this way; 

“ Sokala, you are a good Indian, but the 
white man who is now in jail is a thief, and 
he has lied to you. He is no magician,” and 
producing the compass and the bottle taken 
from Holtess, he continued; ‘‘ Many white 
men have a compass. This bottle contains 
a little red ink and water made to smell bad 
with rotten meat. I now break this bottle 
and bury the pieces in the dirt.” 

Sokala looked scared, but as nobody else 


264 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

prepared to run from the smallpox medicine, 
he stood his ground. 

“You will not go back to the white man 
this evening,” Munro continued after a short 
pause. “You may have the tent of Holtess, 
because he will not need a tent for a long 
time. I now give you twenty white dollars. 
We return your gun to you, and we give you 
those two bags. There is powder in one and 
lead in the other, so you can kill game. To¬ 
morrow or next day you must take the canoe 
in which you and Holtess have traveled and 
return to your own people. The white man 
will not need a canoe for many moons. 

“ If you ever see the bad white man again, 
you must not speak to him. He cannot give 
you the smallpox, but if the soldiers find you 
with him, they will lock chains on your hands 
and put you in a room with an iron door. 

“ One thing more I will tell you, and then 
I have spoken. Ten soldier scouts came 
down the river to-day. To-morrow they will 
put chains on the feet of Holtess, and they 
will take him to the big judge at St. Augus¬ 
tine, and the judge will hang him or put him 
in jail for a long time.” 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 265 

An hour after supper, when Bhl and 
Malota looked for Sokala, he was gone, and 
nobody in Jacksonville ever saw him again. 

Very much to the relief of Munro, the 
sergeant in command of the military scout¬ 
ing party, agreed to take Holtess to St. 
Augustine, where he was later tried before 
the Territorial Court, found guilty and sen¬ 
tenced to three years imprisonment. 

In the evening, when Munro and Hanowa 
had taken their turn at sentinel duty at the 
rickety log-house jail in which Holtess was 
confined, Munro learned from the soldiers, 
who came to visit with him, about the 
progress of the war. 

There had not been much progress. A 
few skirmishes had occurred, and both sides 
were becoming more embittered. Osceola 
and other leading chiefs had not been cap¬ 
tured, nor had they expressed a willingness 
to surrender. 

Munro sent the recovered Government 
money with the military scouting party to 
the commanding officer, General Thomas S. 
Jessup. For the capture of Sokala he 
claimed no reward, but he wrote Major Bel- 


266 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

ton to pay half of the reward for the capture 
of Holtess to Hanowa, which was done, as 
soon as the money became available. 

For a week Munro and his party lived 
what seemed to them a life of luxury in the 
old jail, which they had first subjected to a 
thorough house-cleaning. The two men 
thoroughly enjoyed the rest after their long, 
arduous journey, while Bill and Malota 
fished to their heart’s content. Bill might 
have caught another alligator, but he had 
lost his taste for alligator-fishing. “ What 
can you do with the big brute,” he asked, 
‘‘ after you have caught him? ” 

Then came the sad day of parting. Bill 
and his father sailed for New York on a ship 
carrying lumber, and Hanowa and Malota 
paddled up the St, Johns River, starting on 
their long journey to St. Augustine, Fort 
Brooke and Tallahassee’s camp on the 
Mayakka. Both parties realized that they 
would probably never see each other again. 

The deplorable Seminole war dragged on 
into a weary length. On October 21, 1837, 
about four months after the parting of Han- 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 267 

owa and Munro, Osceola and a number of 
Seminoles were treacherously captured near 
Fort Peyton south of St. Augustine, by 
order of General Jessup. The Indians had 
come to talk under a flag of truce. The 
action of the commander was generally and 
bitterly condemned. It is the only instance 
of that kind on record in the history of the 
United States. 

Osceola and several other chiefs were at 
first confined in the old Spanish fort at St. 
Augustine. Chief Wildcat and a compan¬ 
ion made a bold escape from this prison, but 
Osceola refused to join them, saying that he 
had done nothing wrong. After the escape 
of Wildcat, Osceola was transferred to 
Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, South 
Carolina. At this place the famous traveler 
and painter of Indians, George Catlin, 
painted his picture, and Osceola died at Fort 
Moultrie on January 30, 1838. 

The war was at last brought to an end by 
General William J. Worth in 1842. Gen¬ 
eral Worth was as wise and humane in deal¬ 
ing with the Indians as he was brave in 
battle. By this time, most of the Seminoles 



268 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

had been transferred to the West. General 
Worth estimated that only about three hun¬ 
dred of them were left in Florida. These, 
he said, could not be captured, and he recom¬ 
mended that they be allowed to remain. 
They did remain in the inaccessible swamps 
and Everglades of Southern Florida and 
their descendants live in Florida to this day. 

The descendants of those that were in¬ 
duced to leave Florida constitute to-day one 
of the Five Civilized Tribes in the State of 
Oklahoma. The other four civilized tribes 
are the Cherokees, the Creeks, the Chicka- 
saws, and the Choctaws. These tribes were 
all removed from their homes in the various 
States and settled on land which at the time 
was thought to be worthless or not demanded 
for white settlers. The total number of 
Indians in these five tribes is now 101,000, 
of which 3,000 are Seminoles. Many of 
these Indians have become prosperous 
farmers and stock-raisers, and the discoverv 
of oil on their lands has brought to many of 
them wealth beyond the wildest dreams of 
their ancestors. That these Indians were 
forced to abandon forests and swamps of 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 269 

comparatively little value and were com¬ 
pelled to settle on land, which proved first 
to be a rich farming and grazing country 
and has lately been found to be underlaid 
with vast sheets of gold, is one of the ironies 
of history. 

The sad and tragic chapter in the history 
of our Indians is closing. The old people 
and the old order are rapidly passing. With¬ 
in a few decades the transformation will be 
complete, and the Indians will be pros¬ 
perous citizens of the Best Country on 
Earth, the best in spite of all its faults and 
shortcomings. 

In considering the history of these tribes 
since the coming of the white man, there 
comes to mind the words of the Good Book: 

‘‘Ye thought evil against me; but God 
meant it unto good.” 

The well-known phrase, “A Century of 
Dishonor,” might properly be changed to, 
“A Century of Tragedy and Conflict.” The' 
Indians still lived the life of men of the 
Stone Age; they were our Contemporaries 
from the Stone Age. The forces of life and 
human nature being what they are, tragedy 


270 THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 

and conflict were inevitable and beyond 
human control. The men of the Stone Age 
and the men of the Steel Age could not live 
in peace side by side. 

Florida is now a land of gardens and 
homes. It is still a land of flowers and sun¬ 
shine, of marvelous springs and rivers, of 
palms and tropical jungles and of long 
white beaches. Much the white man has 
ruined by fire and ill-advised drainage, but 
much is left, and much can be restored; for 
the white race is learning to love and appre¬ 
ciate the land to which it has fallen heir. 

The renmants of the Seminoles still cling 
to the land of their fathers. They are still 
a peaceful, truthful, and honest people who 
ask only to be let alone. A Seminole will 
lead a white man out of the Everglades; he 
will never lead him in; but the Yoh-o-eehee, 
the cry of Osceola’s warriors, will never be 
heard again in Florida. 

“ Seminole ” has become a good word, a 
magic word. Modern hotels use it to invite 
their guests to visit the fountains of youth 
for which Ponce de Leon searched in vain. 


THE BOAST OF THE SEMINOLE 271 

Great railroads use the magic word to bring 
to Florida workers and thinkers, who raise 
out of the soil the golden treasure which De 
Soto and his host of Spanish conquerors 
could not find. 

May the remnants of the Seminoles live 
long in the land of their fathers. And may 
the white man not despoil the land which 
has been entrusted to his care! 


The End 







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